reCAPTCHAs Are Finally Readable By Normal Humans

[sunnyd]

Story : http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/recaptchas-are-finally-rea

Google today announced that reCAPTCHAs served up to humans are finally readable without the need to squint your eyes or bang your keyboard in frustration after typing the wrong sequence of letters five times in a row. Who can even read those things, amirite?

Google has figured out how to tell if you're a human or a bot, and if you're human you get an easy CAPTCHA. We've asked Google why a CAPTCHA would be necessary at all if the company already knows you're human, but we haven't received an answer yet. Anyway, Google reCAPTCHA Product Manager Vinay Shet writes in a blog post ...

"The updated system uses advanced risk analysis techniques, actively considering the user’s entire engagement with the CAPTCHA - before, during and after they interact with it. That means that today the distorted letters serve less as a test of humanity and more as a medium of engagement to elicit a broad range of cues that characterize humans and bots.

As part of this, we’ve recently released an update that creates different classes of CAPTCHAs for different kinds of users. This multi-faceted approach allows us to determine whether a potential user is actually a human or not, and serve our legitimate users CAPTCHAs that most of them will find easy to solve. Bots, on the other hand, will see CAPTCHAs that are considerably more difficult and designed to stop them from getting through."

[ejonesss]

or have the new posts moderated by human.

since captchas are meant to prevent spam my comment/suggestion will concentrate on spam prevention.

i have seen on some forums if you post something the public does not see the message until the moderators/admins read it and verify that it is not spam (yes they will have to be doing that work all day but the board will be more sure and safe from spam).

if a message comes across trying to sell some weight loss pills all the admin has to do is delete the message.

if a message comes across that is off topic he just moves it to the correct topic/forum and marks it readable by the public.

[sunnyd]

or have the new posts moderated by human.

ejonesss, you're going backwards in time here. Why do you think captchas were designed in the first place?

Here's a suggestion, start a forum yourself, use no captchas and/or other security/spam prevention and then come back and let us know how you like volunteering for all day work, manually sorting through every single post.

[ejonesss]

i have seen other forums do that as well as newsgroups so i am speaking from experience.

i would use other tactics like heuristics looking for obvious patterns of spam like $ numbers with dots and certain keywords.

yes that will ensnare a lot of legit subjects like if you are trying to list the prices of a product if it is a product review forum for example or an ip address if it is a network related forum and certain keywords.

other way is to have like youtube does where the users report then automate the takedown where the post is taken down immediately after the user reports.

[Godzillaland]

While they might be more readable by humans they are just as useless in stopping bots.

I have seen forums where to sign up they have a CAPTCHA and they were getting hundreds of bots signing up a day. The admins were getting flooded with many posts an hour.

So they changed things up and don't bother with CAPTCHAs at all and with the changes the only bots they get are the human ones every now and then which is impossible to stop.

Another site has CAPTCHAs with every post, and they still get bots posting.

There was a game site that used CAPTCHAs to stop bots from going around and collecting boxes. It only annoyed humans as the bots were quickly updated to bypass them.

Short version, CAPTCHAs don't work. They only annoy/tick off humans.

As a friend of mine says, if it can be programmed it can be hacked. Nothing is secure.

[MrFredPFL]

and yet we haven't had an issue with bot spam here in quite a while. why do u suppose that is?

[ejonesss]

even minteye got cracked http://www.minteye.com/

http://hackaday.com/?s=minteye for the hack on minteye

http://hackaday.com/?s=captcha for the hack of all captchas.


my thoughts on moderation is if the spammer sees his posts are not showing up he may stop.

[bmh67wa]

How dare anyone insinuate that I may be a normal human!


j/k <---------- added to avoid confusion and emphasize that I was joking.







But still...

[Godzillaland]

and yet we haven't had an issue with bot spam here in quite a while. why do u suppose that is?

There could be many reasons for this other then CAPTCHAs.

How customized has the signup system been made? Are there additional questions that need to be answered that change a lot? Bots can't answer questions they have not been programmed with already. So if on Mondays it asks "In alphabetical order name the 2 major companies that are trying to screw people. hint both have AA at the end of their names." and then the next day its "Name a really bad law that makes most people into criminals. Hint its 4 letters" and so on, then that would be much harder for a bot maker to fight because they would specifically have to know this site, and know that each day has a different question with different answers. Even if its just one different question that they don't change often, the same as above the maker of the bot would have to known the question specifically for this site.


Also at the bottom it says "Protected by Anti-Spam ACP". What changes has this made to the forums?

There could also be other defenses that were put up that I haven't thought of. I don't know who does the work on your site, but if you are not getting any spam bots at all here then thats great. Very few sites have that kind of luck/programming skill behind them.

But I do know that from experience and talking others who have run forums, CAPTCHAs do very little if anything to actually stop bots. They don't even notice they are there.

[MrFredPFL]

i think your view of the situation is unfairly pessimistic. bots are a serious issue, but they are not unstoppable.

[Godzillaland]

i think your view of the situation is unfairly pessimistic. bots are a serious issue, but they are not unstoppable.

No where have I said they are unstoppable. I said CAPTCHAs don't work to stop bots. Sure they did work at the very first, but then soon after the bot makers build in ways to read them. They were broken as far back as 2005. And I'm sure each time the coding for the CAPTCHAs gets changed/updated its sets back the bots for a few hours to a few days.

Its been a long time since I signed up for slyck.com so I don't remember what was in the signup page but hopefully since that time its been changed, updated and customized which would explain why you are not having any issues with bots here.

[Golgo1]

i think your view of the situation is unfairly pessimistic. bots are a serious issue, but they are not unstoppable.

No where have I said they are unstoppable. I said CAPTCHAs don't work to stop bots. Sure they did work at the very first, but then soon after the bot makers build in ways to read them. They were broken as far back as 2005. And I'm sure each time the coding for the CAPTCHAs gets changed/updated its sets back the bots for a few hours to a few days.

By your reasoning, AV software doesnt stop ALL viruses, so we should just stop all together.
Stop signs dont stop ALL drivers, so lets just get rid of them.
Hospitals dont save ALL their patients, so I think we should just shut them down and stop training doctors.

"I said CAPTCHAs don't work to stop bots" is an extreme (and narrow minded) statement.
"CAPTCHAs don't work to ALL stop bots" is correct, reasonable, and easily dependable.

When absolutist views are clarified/debunked, THEN we can move onto a dialog on whether CAPTCHAS stop enough bots to make them worth continuing to use.

And on a different reply... I nominate ejoness for the position of official forum post reviewer. He can volunteer his time to review each and every post made to Slyck. It's easy and shouldn't take much of his time (at least, that is what I am led to believe)

[sunnyd]

And on a different reply... I nominate ejoness for the position of official forum post reviewer. He can volunteer his time to review each and every post made to Slyck. It's easy and shouldn't take much of his time (at least, that is what I am led to believe)

It's possible that it could take years for anyone to complete all the prerequisites for that position. Speed reading, sustained silent reading, speed comprehension. And most important, the reviewer must be able to demonstrate a non-paranoid attitude/demeanor (a clear understanding that not everyone and everything is out to get people), so that approved posts are in accordance with staying on topic. Resumes will be heavily scrutinized.

[ejonesss]

that or the subjects i knew more about so i could answer them to sunnyd standards

or sunnyd finnaly got level 4 or 5 of deniability .

here is a somewhat related post

viewtopic.php?t=62914

And on a different reply... I nominate ejoness for the position of official forum post reviewer. He can volunteer his time to review each and every post made to Slyck. It's easy and shouldn't take much of his time (at least, that is what I am led to believe)

It's possible that it could take years for anyone to complete all the prerequisites for that position. Speed reading, sustained silent reading, speed comprehension. And most important, the reviewer must be able to demonstrate a non-paranoid attitude/demeanor (a clear understanding that not everyone and everything is out to get people), so that approved posts are in accordance with staying on topic. Resumes will be heavily scrutinized.

[sunnyd]

ejonesss, apparently you did not read my words correctly...

I stated exactly this....

It's possible that it could take years for anyone to complete all the prerequisites

I did not say, it's possible it could take years for ejonesss, and the joke was that nobody will be reviewing posts. Methods are in place here that work well. We don't plan to go backwards in time.

[sunnyd]

that or the subjects i knew more about so i could answer them to sunnyd standards

If you consider asking you to actually read articles before you comment on them, as having standards, then yes, I have standards.

[ejonesss]

you dont have to but i will go back in time.

case in point i had to revert back to a time machine backup of my mac when a software update went horribly wrong resulting in some broken software/

[sunnyd]

ejonesss, your mac issue and our methods used here for spam/whatever are NOT related. We don't have an issue here, we have NO need to go back in time to having someone review posts. Is that understandable now?

[Golgo1]

I agree with
I strongly disagree with "We don't plan to go backwards in time"

All we need is 1.21 gigawatts

[sunnyd]

All we need is 1.21 gigawatts

I would not mind using a DeLorean.

[ejonesss]

+1 Golgo1

even the president has gone back in time with technology

i saw on a documentary somewhere that airforce 1's technology does not include any latest technology because of the fear of an emp taking it out or even terrorist nations hacking into it so you are not going to find any of today's chinese made stuff in airforce 1.

[sunnyd]

even the president has gone back in time with technology

i saw on a documentary somewhere that airforce 1's technology does not include any latest technology because of the fear of an emp taking it out or even terrorist nations hacking into it so you are not going to find any of today's chinese made stuff in airforce 1

ejonesss, it did not take much research to find out that Air Force One has not declined any new technology (the President is not going back in time). In fact, after 9/11, per this article:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and ... 120413.htm

it says this....

Because of electronics and communications upgrades after 9/11, the aircraft's power demands are "straining" the current engines, Defense News said.

They are upgrading to a more efficient and powerful fleet, and by 2017 they hope to have the entire fleet replaced...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One

Future replacement

The VC-25As are expected to be replaced, as they have become less cost-effective to operate. The USAF Air Mobility Command has been charged with looking into possible replacements, including the new Boeing 747-8 and the Airbus A380.On 7 January 2009, the Air Force Materiel Command, as part of its Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization Program (PAR), posted a notice to survey and identify potential suppliers of the next generation of Presidential airplane to begin service in 2017. By 28 January 2009, the deadline for responding to the survey notice, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) announced that it would not participate in the program leaving Boeing the sole possible provider with either its Boeing 747-8 or Boeing 787 Dreamliner being proposed

You can also refer to this article....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-1 ... l-jet.html

Part of the article....

The Pentagon has budgeted $757 million through 2017 for the first phase of the Air Force One replacement and $1.84 billion for the helicopter replacement through 2017 and most of the money would be spent after fiscal 2015, the official said.

The initial new Air Force One wouldn’t be delivered for modification with specialized technology until 2019, according to the Pentagon’s latest 30-year aviation plan.

The Pentagon has a plan, but that plan does not include going back in time, and I seriously doubt that it ever did.

[tehdoomsayer]

Hey now, if Air Force One can outrun the laser of doom from Independence Day I'd say they're gonna be just fine!

[ejonesss]

still it is a fine example of resisting new technology or reverting back to old te4chnology.

[sunnyd]

still it is a fine example of resisting new technology or reverting back to old te4chnology.

ejonesss, what do you think is a fine example, and exactly who do you think is resisting technology, and who is reverting back to old technology? There is nothing in this thread that indicates that anyone is, or wants to.