I never really had a problem with the old Captchas, the ones that gave you a distorted word and/or numerals to type in. They were mildly annoying, but I found them easily solvable and the goal at least was laudable.
However the move to sets of pictures with instructions to click on those that met certain criteria drove me insane. I was taken aback to realize it was four years ago that I last vented on this blog about this new torture device. I also noticed that I haven’t encountered many of these, and I realize I haven’t actually seen a Captcha of any description for quite a long time. Clearly site owners have decided this is driving their customers away.
That changed this week, when a team at work decided to use a third-party collaboration product that protects itself with a Captcha.
It was one of those picture versions. I was asked to click on everything with a fire hydrant showing. Some were obvious, but some weren’t. As always, the trouble with these things is that the pictures are so small and grainy it’s often impossible to tell what you’re actually looking at. Yes, it’s a road. I can make out houses and trees. Is that fuzzy blob a fire hydrant or a cat? Impossible to tell.
I spent five minutes of sheer frustration, failing again and again before I finally made it in. If this was a site I was visiting for personal reasons I would have given up right away, but I needed to sign on for work purposes.
Whether or not I’ll have to go through this process again next week is yet to be seen, but the experience prompted me to do some research.
It turns out that it’s not my imagination, they really have been making these things more difficult to solve. It’s the usual arms race between defenders and attackers.
What is more unsettling, though, is that we have permanently lost this particular race.
Machine learning and visual recognition systems are now so good that they can outperform people on these kinds of tasks.
In other words, the test that is supposed to prove you are a human, not a bot, can now be passed by bots better than people. In response, the designers are resorting to making them so difficult that the people they are supposed to admit can’t solve them.
Sounds like it’s time for a serious re-think!
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7 comments:
Agreed!
As you observe, the images are often too small or indistinct to make a useful test. And if the bots are now better than the people, the test is obviously obsolete . . . a Turing test for bots isn't exactly what the designers had in mind.
I'd like to go back to the word Captchas than use the images. I hate those! And you usually have to do a few different ones before it accepts it (even if you get it right the first time). At least, that's my experience.
Funny that you mentioned that, though, because just a half-an-hour ago, I had to put word verification up on my blog because the past two days I've been overloaded with spam comments (from one username). I won't keep it up long, though. Just long enough that this person moves on.
Rick, the real irony is that Google has been using people's responses to the Captchas to help train AIs in visual recognition. Bots are defeating the Captchas using the (publicly available) visual recognition services that are available as a result.
Chrys, I wonder if you were hit by the same spammer as I was a week or so ago.
UGH! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who struggles with those darned Captcha images. They make me feel old and stupid. (And VERY annoyed.) You're right. They're gonna have to come up with something better. If bots can solve those stupid things better than we brilliant (ha) humans, something's gotta give.
Susan, the original concept was reasonable, but in the last few years technology has overtaken us.
Hi Ian - I hardly come across captchas now ... and they don't seem to work on blogger anyway - dare I say this?! Sometimes I need to go through three times ... but only occasionally ..... and probably not on bloggers' sites - cheers Hilary
Uh! I agree that they are so annoying. I rarely come across them. Just the occasional blog. I've had times when I tried with 4 different sets of pictures. Why oh why do they take away the pics I click and then replace them with more (so small and grainy I can't see them)??? :-)
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