

Are CAPTCHAs getting too hard for humans? - throwaway7767

I regularly browse HN through tor. As a tor user I&#x27;m used to having to solve CAPTCHAs everywhere I go, as there&#x27;s always some assholes using tor for abuse.<p>In the past couple of days, the CAPTCHAs for HN got <i>way</i> harder, to the point that I can&#x27;t solve them. It used to be two words where one was an easy control word you could skip, the other a semi-hard word that I&#x27;d get ~70% success rate on.<p>Now, both words are equally hard with additional distortion, and my success rate approaches 0%.<p>Are CAPTCHAs really still workable if this is what&#x27;s needed to keep the bots out? If humans can&#x27;t solve the problem, it&#x27;s probably not a good metric to determine whether someone is a human or a bot.<p>I don&#x27;t have any good solutions here, but this is very frustrating and I&#x27;d love to see some discussion about alternatives.
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seanccox
I don't have a solution, but I would like to echo that I experience the
problem almost daily. I don't use Tor for HN, but I do use it to access FB
(which is restricted in my workplace) and – since the main reason I use FB is
to get local news – I often encounter difficult CAPTCHAs when following a link
to an external new site. I haven't detected a clear pattern either, except
that my fail rate has gone up dramatically.

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cabirum
I'd love to see some valid reasons for using Tor to browse HN. To discuss
solutions, you need to define the problem first. I don't know, use a VPN
service or set up your own?

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throwaway7767
> I'd love to see some valid reasons for using Tor to browse HN.

Many countries have restrictive firewalls, for example. In other countries
things may not be blocked, but people know their actions are being monitored
and would prefer to be able to communicate openly without self-censorship.

If you need more food for thought to stimulate your imagination, the tor
project has a page just for this:
[https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en)

> To discuss solutions, you need to define the problem first. I don't know,
> use a VPN service or set up your own?

I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of my post. I am technically
inclined and I'm sure I could find many workarounds. But that will not help
other tor users. The hope by posting this here is that the HN admins will see
it and try to give tor users a better user experience. Other people in the
tech community might see it and decide to deal with tor users in a better way
themselves.

To preempt the inevitable, I am not saying any of these people have any
obligation to serve tor users. But I suspect most of this is not done
intentionally and the people running sites do not realize how they
inconvenience a segment of their userbase.

~~~
cabirum
Tor is not the only tool out there to protect privacy/circumvent restrictions.
It has flaws by design, such as all traffic has to pass through limited number
of known exit nodes, and you cannot easily filter out unwanted stuff, so a
CAPTCHA in one form or another is pretty much the only solution. If you
suggesting to just replace it with some easier implementation, it would be
automated.

So the solution is on the users' side. Just choose another approach that works
for you, such as VPN. You won't get CAPTCHA'd, privacy still protected,
problem solved. One way or another, technically inclined users are not the
ones experiencing problems with restrictions.

~~~
throwaway7767
As I said, this thread was meant to encourage discussion of how websites can
better service tor users. "Don't use tor then" isn't really helpful in that
context.

To seed this discussion with an idea rather than letting it degenerate
further, how about only requiring CAPTCHAs for account signups/logins,
allowing read-only access? It would not solve everything, but it would sure
make things better.

