You (probably) don’t need ReCAPTCHA

nearcyan.com

4 pointsmparramon3 comments

These captchas must be contributing to the technological divide; If I am met with an endless loop identifying busses and fire hydrants, I know the only solution to prove I am not a robot is to change my internet connection (ie. by vpn)

I can't imagine this being a pleasant experience for anyone who is not well versed in digital technologies. Especially when having to do something essential.

You need some sort of captcha or you will get a million spams for seo services. I found that putting a select dropdown list on forms cuts out a lot of form spam.

You only get spam if there is some incentive to spam. If you can remove the incentive, there should be no reason to spam. Are they spamming links and you don't need links in your content? Don't allow links and problem solved.

In the worst case scenario, and old-school non-ReCaptcha captcha would still be fine. ReCaptcha wants you to believe that the old "squiggly letters" captchas are trivial to break, but I have yet to see a universal program that will successfully parse an arbitrary old-school captcha.

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