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Comment by VCFundedGenYer | Hacker News Reader

I've seen weird situations where I'm objectively solving the captcha correctly yet it still doesn't recognize it as correct.

At this point captchas need to be completely removed everywhere. They aren't effective and just waste time.

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Captchas are often used as tarpits. They've already decided you're a bot based on other factors so you aren't getting in until you change those factors. I've seen this happen where I'm stuck in the loop and then change the VPN endpoint and get right in after one try.

I'm sure there exist examples where people maliciously give tasks (captchas) out that have no chance of getting the person anywhere, but it's definitely not common

Consider yourself lucky. I routinely run into tarpit Google reCAPTCHAs and I don't even use a VPN. I think it's because I run Linux and the site admins treat anything besides Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android Chrome as suspicious enough to blacklist. It has gotten to a point that I literally never even _try_ to do image-based CAPTCHAs anymore. If I can't access the site, oh well.

I also get infinite captchas but it's imo not a tarpit if it's not intentional but a bug

Edit: looked up the term, DDG shows a Wikipedia card saying "A tarpit is a service on a computer system that purposely delays incoming connections." (purposeful)

It may seem purposeful on Google's part but I bet that if we could get through to the developers for answers, it's probably not designed that way but we're running into a case where the system isn't designed to handle it

Which could be said to be intentional (excluding people with our FOSS setup), I guess

We were getting about few hundred spam registrations per day on one of our sites. With CF's captcha number drops to tens per day. I have no idea who and why make these registrations.

How do you know they are spam? I use disposable emails for registration wherever I can, and if there's too much friction I'll just drop it.

This might not solve the problem for you, when I get stuck in a captcha loop, I click the Audio option. I usually get past in 1 try.

The audio option will be blocked if you use it too much.

If you can reliably use it, you are not at the "deepest" bot detection level.

What does "use it too much" even mean for someone who is sight-impaired and who needs to use it every time?

Bernard from Westworld failing CAPTCHAs: Doesn't look like anything to me?

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