CAPTCHA How Does It Work?

esuhl

maman wrote: »

For the past couple of days I've been getting a CAPTCHA 'Are you a robot?' message when posting on mse. It's never happened before. Anyone know why and what I can do about it?

Scan for malware with Malwarebytes, adwCleaner and your antivirus. Then reboot your router to (hopefully) get assigned a new IP address.

sillygoose

A lot of them show like house number plaques on what look like USA houses or street signs. I assume they are making a small amount of income by using you to identify/confirm addresses for some sort of database, perhaps for marketing or mapping that a computer struggles to read. Or perhaps to confirm an address a courier delivered to and captured the house on a camera as proof of visit.

Andy_L

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

colin79666

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsF7enQY8uI

The methods vary but the intention is to filter out a computer program from a real human user.

EdwardB

Some are used to confirm text from old books, but most can be overcome by spammers.

I used to subscribe to a service where if the capcha had been answered by anybody before it solved it, if not it sent it to some poor person in an IT centre in India to solve and then solved it.

Service was quite cheap, about $20 for 5000 solves, they have got more intelligent but as others have said they drive people nuts.

paddyrg

maman wrote: »

For the past couple of days I've been getting a CAPTCHA 'Are you a robot?' message when posting on mse. It's never happened before. Anyone know why and what I can do about it?

I see you posted on this thread to revive it from the dead, so you're getting challenged on this site. Most likely they've either introduced a new system to reduce spammers to the forum, or you've got a cookie blocker or new computer. It's just a modern fact of life, and you're not being singled out for anything.

maman

paddyrg wrote: »

I see you posted on this thread to revive it from the dead, so you're getting challenged on this site. Most likely they've either introduced a new system to reduce spammers to the forum, or you've got a cookie blocker or new computer. It's just a modern fact of life, and you're not being singled out for anything.

Thanks for that. I was more concerned that some sort of bug had got into my computer.


I use the site often but not the techie part. I revived the thread after doing a search for CAPTCHA rather than start a new one.

I'm confused as we keep our security software up to date and do regular scans but I'm thinking it has to be something to do with the computer as I don't get the same message on my phone.

paddyrg

maman wrote: »

Thanks for that. I was more concerned that some sort of bug had got into my computer.


I use the site often but not the techie part. I revived the thread after doing a search for CAPTCHA rather than start a new one.

I'm confused as we keep our security software up to date and do regular scans but I'm thinking it has to be something to do with the computer as I don't get the same message on my phone.

Hiya, yes the CAPTCHA is nothing to do with your computer or security, it's all to do with the confidence the website has that you're who you say you are. That can be easier with a mobile than a laptop

I wasn't having a go BTW, just noted that you could get overlooked when you had a genuine question as people often respond to the OP (I've seen responses to threads several years old after someone brought them back to life!)

maman

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond.


If it's the website, is there anything I can do to ask them to stop it happening?

paddyrg

maman wrote: »

If it's the website, is there anything I can do to ask them to stop it happening?

Alas no, although you can minimise it by making sure you're accepting cookies and have any 'privacy' settings set to low (for that site at least). It's a side-effect of the arms escalation between honest websites and the scammers who want to abuse them. We punters are left in the crossfire. No vendor/site wants to have to use these roadblocks, but when a spambot costs $10 for 10,000 forum posts (for instance) think what this place would be like without them! It would become as unusable as many blog comments sections did, or 'guestbooks' before them :,-( Greedy people ruin good things.