Google Begins Replacing the CAPTCHA with an ‘I’m Not a Robot’ Checkbox
For years, innocent citizens have been forced to decode CAPTCHAs, those ridiculously hard-to-read codes meant to prove you’re not a robot. But now, thanks to Google, our years of suffering may be coming to an end.
The company has begun rolling out a new human-verification system that bypasses the impossible security codes that were originally created to prevent robots and harmful scripts from accessing websites.
Per its company blog post, the new technology, named reCAPTCHA, “actively considers a user’s entire engagement with the CAPTCHA — before, during, and after — to determine whether that user is a human.”
So instead of seeing this next time you’re trying to log in to a site …
You’ll see this (that is, if the site in question has adopted Google’s new API) …
We first heard that Google cracked the CAPTCHA code back in April, when the company published a paper about an algorithm researchers created to crack its own CAPTCHAs. Now it’s finally being introduced to the real world.
But the good news comes with a catch: Depending on various conditions, reCAPTCHA’s risk analysis engine may not always be able to tell whether you’re an abusive Internet virus or an actual human being (concerning, I know!). In those cases, the solution is — you guessed it — to enter a CAPTCHA, like so.
Sigh. Someday, guys, someday.
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