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Comment by smackfu | Hacker News Reader

Here's something interesting. If I go to the ReCaptcha demo page in Chrome that is logged in to Google, I get all house numbers, a lot of which seem like easy OCR. If go to the same demo page in Incognito mode, I get the two word version instead, like this blog is complaining about.

http://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/

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Yes: reCAPTCHA now keeps a profile of you and gives humanoid users easier reCAPTCHAs.

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2013/10/recaptcha-j...

in other words, it's not giving you reCaptchas, it's giving you unCaptcha's yet so you can do work for them for google streetview.

Yep, in incognito mode Google hasn't built up a profile of you yet so they assume you're a spammer.

If they are using your profile, what is the point of recaptcha then? It's circular reasoning.

You are free labor

It was one thing when they were digitizing books. I refuse to help them improve Google Maps. I have never correctly entered in a map number. As long as you're only off by one digit they are accepting

> I refuse to help them improve Google Maps. I have never correctly entered in a map number.

So why don't you stop using Google products if you hate it so much?

I do, but sites still use captchas that give my work to google.

Let's hope this gains some traction

http://wiki.hsr.ch/StefanKeller/ReMAPTCHA

I assume that too many failures puts your profile back into the "hard captcha" pool.

They probably count total tries per period of time, not failures. Bots can be accurate if the captcha is easy.

1. Block people who don't have a profile that may be spammers

2. Free human OCR

And if you start entering some number that are close to the correct answer most times it's accepted. But if you do it like ten times you might be switched to the two words version.

Same here, maybe they trust people who are using their services more and want them to OCR some google street view stuff.

Leaving no captcha would be a hint for spammers to provide requests with valid cookies thus simplifying the task. I assume that's the reason for increased difficulty in incognito.

I've also seen a lot of house numbers in Firefox.

It is based on the google tracking cookies, not being logged in. I don't have a google account, but I still see the house #s on firefox, until I flush their cookies.

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