For over two decades, Captchas have been deployed as security checks by websites to block potentially harmful bots by presenting puzzles that are supposed to be straightforward for people to solve – but very difficult for computers.
Engaged in an arms race with bots, Captchas have since evolved into an annoying presence on the internet, becoming increasingly more and more difficult to solve for both bots and humans.
However, the new yet-to-be peer-reviewed research, posted in arXiv, finds bots are able to quickly crack Captcha tests with ease, suggesting global effort users put into cracking these puzzles every day may be more trouble than it’s worth.
The irony of this is just too much, and it’s made me feel pretty stupid sometimes. I remember struggling for ages with the Epic Games website captcha (along with many others who were complaining). I see Cloudflare had been working on a more modern method (something to do with how the mouse moves to click inside the tick box) which is quicker and always seems to work for me.
But yes, I don’t suppose the results of this survey will surprise anyone.
See https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/captcha-test-bots-better-humans-b2389998.html