Google’s ‘invisible’ CAPTCHA automatically knows you’re a human
Google has promised to abolish one of the biggest online annoyances – the CAPTCHA tests that ask you to prove you’re a human, not a robot.
The company says it has developed an “invisible” system that confirms a user is human by analysing how they browse the web. If it proves successful it means you’ll no longer need to decipher squiggly letters, or tick a ‘I’m not a robot’ box.
For years websites have used CAPTCHAs to prevent automated software from bombarding them with internet traffic. Hackers launch these Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in order to knock a website offline. Other sites use CAPTCHAs to prevent automated programs from buying tickets online and leaving comments.
Google acknowledges that the human-robot test is a necessary evil, but since buying the reCAPTCHA technology in 2009 the company has been working on a way to make it less irritating.
It has gradually replaced wobbly text with puzzles that people can solve, but computers can’t. ese include identifying pictures of dogs in a gallery of animal photos, and listening to somebody reading numbers over music.
Google has launched a site telling website owners about the new system (www.snipca. com/23756), saying that it lets genuine visitors “pass through with ease”.
The company hasn’t revealed exactly how the system works lest hackers find a way to bypass it. But it’s known to look for types of behaviour online typical of humans, but not robots. For example, humans move the cursor in a more random way than robots do.