Ask HN: Do you think Google make ReCaptcha harder for users who block ads? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you think Google make ReCaptcha harder for users who block ads?

47 pointsOrgNet23 comments

For the last few months, ReCaptcha has become really hard for me to solve... and some very important websites use this service, like my bank.

If often take me about 10 tries to get through their unpaid slave work.

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Yes Recaptcha needs a lot of work before it becomes usable again. It's not super friendly for humans and just as easy for bots to break failing miserably on both ends.

I've also noticed that Google search has become a lot less friendly. One of my favorite queries is "site:stackoverflow.com keyword" but 1 out of 5 times I see that annoying captcha (i think google gets triggered faster when I use this keyword to limit my searches to SO only) and then I have to tag a barrage of unending streetlights and cars just to get an answer :(

It has actually been quite beneficial to help me break my Google habit and move to another search engine.

Same here... I think Mozilla should implement a voice only captcha service to improve the common voice project like google does with image recognition... i would prefer to help mozilla with their AI instead of google ;)

Yes.

This is well known.

In general one use of profiling is to tell bots from humans since the average human stomps all over the web with muddy boots.

I guess I need to get with my bank and try to get them to drop Google.

There are other vendors who sell tracker based authentication to banks, government agencies and others conceded with fraud.

A related category is vendors that will ask you questions based on the content of credit and consumer files. (E.g. What color car did you get a loan for in 2012?)

It’s even more fun when you try to block Google entirely from your network. Logins requiring recaptcha fail silently without any indication why.

Yes. I'm a power user and I find the constant captchas as of late absolutely terrible.

If you use TOR browser, you will constantly get capatchas, as your traffic cannot be distinguished from spam, they also become increasingly hard to solve too.

I guess privacy isn't free...

Lack of privacy also isn’t: a huge amount of page traffic and latency is tracking and tracker driven advertising.

Yes it's gotten harder, but it dawned on me a month ago: I just leave the site if it has captcha. Done.

While I cant avoid them all, I do send emails to their admins, and execs expressing my inability to use their services. A few have already dropped some google cruft.

It's not just the wasted time, it's the fact that we're all training Google's services for free.

It also means your blocking of google's trackers is better than average.

While we are on the subject i have noticed that recently (the past week or two) many news sites have deployed anti adblocking technology and refuse to show articles until you disable adblock.

Is there a particular reason for this sudden wave or is it a coincidence?

An almost comical consequence I've noticed is that if I browse with content blockers, but in incognito mode (mobile safari), the adblocker detectors don't seem to block me...

I am experiencing the same thing. In average I loose 2 min per captcha, and that adds up in a day. I am loosing my mind over that, so irritating! I really don't like when some service implements Google recaptcha.

It actually makes me hate Google a lot more. I used to not care so much about what Google was doing even if they were harvesting all of my private Gmail emails.

It's almost like Recaptcha is the new banner ads from the 90s, but worst, because in addition to being annoying, they are also wasting a lot of your time...

What are some good off the shelf modern alternatives for those of us who need to distinguish humans from bots?

Maybe if a couple of those were higher in developer consciousness we’d get fewer recaptchas?

In part due to Spectre and Meltdown, in general starting prior to their being revealed out of paranoia I think is entirely justified, I do financial transactions in a separate browser instance, which is started for each site and exited after finishing, and runs no extensions like ad blockers. I don't get see ReCaptcha while doing this, so if running an ad blocker or other defensive extensions are the cause of your problem you might want to try it.

Life is an eternal struggle between Good and Google.

It sure feels that way to me.

mandatory Podcast about history of Captcha: https://play.podtrac.com/npr-510289/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.n...

I wonder how much money Google makes from ReCaptcha...

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