
Ask HN: Do you have problems solving Google reCAPTCHA? - iperi
About once a month I must login to a website where login form is protected by Google reCAPTCHA mechanism. I did not care much about this, because it took about 20-30 seconds to solve. Acceptable for me. And of course it added some protection against bots.<p>But last month it started driving me crazy. Now I have 10+ tries until it accepts me as a human. I&#x27;m clicking images for about 5-10 minutes just to login to a website! I&#x27;m clicking all roads, all road signs, all cars and still failing the test. I live in Europe and the funniest thing is after 2-3 failed attempts I&#x27;m starting to get images from more exotic places like China. I have very big problems problem with distinguishing between road signs and ads in China because I don&#x27;t know how road signs look there and what is written. So failed combo just continues...<p>As a web developer I really like this mechanism, but as a user it became the wall hard to get through (at least for me).<p>I&#x27;m wondering is just me? Maybe someone else have similar problem with solving reCAPTCHA?
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romellem
Yes, I'd say 1 out of 3 times I fail the first test, and have to solve another
identification task. I have to do these quick often because of the VPN service
I use, which triggers Google searches to use their anti-DDOS measures.

The puzzles where there is a single image divided into cells, often I find
myself not sure if a cell should be selected or not. They may ask "select
cells with street signs" and there will be a cell with a small corner of the
sign shown. Should I select that? Technically it _does_ show a part of the
sign, but I honestly don't know if clicking those leads to successes or
failures.

Additionally, ones that show multiple images and you need to select all images
that contain some object, I struggle with ones where there _might_ be a sliver
of a car, or storefront, or street, within the view. Should those be selected?
They obviously aren't the subject of the photo, but again, technically they
are a part of the image. Again, I don't know what Google is looking for with
these questions.

~~~
iperi
Once I was watching my dad solving puzzle. He got road sign that was hidden in
95% behind leaves of tree. We discussed for a minute should we select this or
not. He selected. It was accepted. Puzzle solved. Then I thought it's
ridiculous.

Maybe someday someone writes a book „How to solve reCAPTCHA? Guide for
beginners”.

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mikro2nd
Often, if confronted by captcha/reCaptcha, I will simply bounce. I'm tired of
the degrading experience of being used -- for no compensation -- as a human
robot to train Google's image recog. algorithms.

Even worse is when it gets used by a site that /already knows I'm a human/ \--
because I've had to jump through KYC hoops or for similar reasons. It's
reached the point where such abuse of my time by a site is strong cause for
moving to a competitor (and there's /always/ a competitor!)

"As a Web Developer" please, PLEASE reconsider using Google's Invasion of
Humanity Device.

~~~
iperi
Do you know any alternatives?

