2w ago

CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit that made us spend 819 billion hours clicking to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

www.pcgamer.com A 2023 study concluded CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service' that made us spend 819 million hours clicking on traffic lights to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

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A 2023 study concluded CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service' that made us spend 819 million hours clicking on traffic lights to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

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Since Cloudflare published Turnstile I've hated Captchas even more, because Turnstile does it so much better. Captchas are such a hassle. One website I occasionally visit does not keep me logged in and then presents one of the worst captcha puzzle systems. Shitty captchas are a huge barrier.
Turnstile is, in almost all cases, one checkbox to click (I've never been challenged beyond that). All captcha puzzles should be replaced with Turnstile or similar simple (for the user to solve) tech.
- Cloudflare turnstile is also the only captcha system that works ok with most browsers and adblockers.
  Especially Google recaptcha freaks out if you use Firefox or an adblocker or anything and asks you the hardest possible questions.
  
  That’s a feature, not a bug.
  
  Anticompetitive feature!
  
  Better than not asking you any questions and just going in an infinite loop!
  
  If your getting looped by turnstile maybe you need to stop being a bot?
  Literally never had an issue with it.
  
  Its a false positive. That's the point.
- Turnstile is worse. Its just an infinite loop. Literally clicking for hours
- How's that work anyway. Fingerprinting?
  
  The announcement blog post linked on the bottom of the linked Turnstile page has some info on that
  For Turnstile, the actual act of checking a box isn’t important, it’s the background data we’re analyzing while the box is checked that matters. We find and stop bots by running a series of in-browser tests, checking browser characteristics, native browser APIs, and asking the browser to pass lightweight tests (ex: proof-of-work tests, proof-of-space tests) to prove that it’s an actual browser. The current deployment of Turnstile checks billions of visitors every day, and we are able to identify browser abnormalities that bots exhibit while attempting to pass those tests.

43 comments