Do you know how the "I am not a robot" anti-spam checkboxes work?

[mouser]

Many people don't realize what these "I am not a robot" (re)Captcha things are actually doing..

It's pretty cool -- it's all about watching your BEHAVIOR and mouse movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCr6rNaZ9EU

See also: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/12/05/i-am-not-a-robot-google-swaps-text-captchas-for-quivery-mouse-clicks/

[MilesAhead]

They should just have an "I am a robot" checkbox and make the robots check it. 

The evolution seems to be heading away from some deterministic test, like if you keep changing the blurry text or the audio you will nearly always eventually get one that can be read or heard correctly, to a non-deterministic test which amounts to "I did not like how you moved your mouse."  End of story.  There is no way to "prove" you moved the mouse in a human way since what that is cannot be divulged.

Basically it amounts to "we don't want you to be able to sign in."
We seem to be moving to a world of bouncers who decide by whim who to let inside the club,store, dmv, forum, web site etc..

[Deozaan]

So, basically, everyone on the internet was used as a giant "botnet" to teach Skynet how to read, understand voices, and differentiate between objects in an image/video. And it probably sent it all to the NSA at the same time.



But seriously, people using Captcha have trained or are currently training computers (through machine learning) in the following fields:

1. How to read and differentiate between letters/words better than humans can. Improving OCR, etc.
2. How to understand various human voices saying words or letters/numbers. Improving speech-to-text engines (such as that used to transcribe voicemail in Google Voice).
3. How to recognize various objects in photos. Street signs, trees, animals, people, etc.
4. ??? I'm sure the "I am not a robot" version is sending a lot of information about us. What is it training the machine to do with that information? Mimic how a human interacts with a browser?

Really cool! And kind of scary.

[MilesAhead]

I have experienced sites in the past where no matter how many attempts I made, I could not get past the Captcha.  Usually in this case there is no way to communicate with the administrator since you cannot post or PM.  You are frozen out unless the system just happens to run on a Linux derivative and emailing to root on the domain just happens to work.  I think that is pretty rare these days.

In effect the lockout will be totally arbitrary.  What are you going to do?  Sit there for hours making different mouse gestures before you click the check box?  The whole concept is absurd.

They might as well just turn on your web cam and get a look at you to see if you are "their kind of person" before they allow you to log on.

[Stoic Joker]

They might as well just turn on your web cam and get a look at you to see if you are "their kind of person" before they allow you to log on.

Dude, don't say shit like that ... Somebody'll want to try it... (eek!)

[MilesAhead]

They might as well just turn on your web cam and get a look at you to see if you are "their kind of person" before they allow you to log on.

Dude, don't say shit like that ... Somebody'll want to try it... (eek!)

It is probably out there already.  But not on sites I would frequent.  Like "Billionaires' Club" or something.