Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Web
  3. News

Google’s next-gen reCAPTCHA test will disappear if it concludes you’re human

By

google recaptcha api android
Image used with permission by copyright holder
If you’ve ever submitted a form on the internet (and who hasn’t?), chances are you’ve had to transcribe a series of blurry letters and digits to a blank box. It’s a form of challenge-response testing called CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), and it’s designed to prevent clever ‘bots from hammering websites with nonsense data. One of the most widely adopted forms is Google’s reCAPTCHA, which displays as many as 100 million tests every day. But starting on Thursday, the search giant is getting rid of ’em.

Google is introducing “invisible reCAPTCHAs,” or CAPTCHAs that automatically disappear when a human user is detected. Form fillers that trip Google’s Advanced Risk Analysis algorithms will still have to solve the CAPTCHA test, but most users won’t see it at all.

Recommended Videos

That’s apparently thanks to “advanced analysis techniques” that consider a user’s “entire engagement” with CAPTCHA and “evaluate a broad range of cues.” It’s more than a one-time deal — Google says it “actively consider[s] a user’s engagement with the CAPTCHA — before, during, and after — to determine whether that user is a human.”

Google acquired reCAPTCHA from a team at Carnegie Mellon University’s main Pittsburgh campus, and since then, it has made it free. That has helped it grow into one of the most widely used CAPTCHA providers in the world, and the anti-spam test of choice for Facebook, TicketMaster, Twitter, 4chan, CNN.com, StumbleUpon, Craigslist, and tens of thousands of others.

Google has used the results of reCAPTCHAs for social good. As part of the project, it has digitized more than 13 million articles from The New York Times dating from 1851 to the present day, and transcribed tomes too illegible to be scanned by computers. The results of reCAPTCHA tests have helped to translate books into different languages, verified the characters of street addresses in Google’s Street View mapping service, and supplied researchers with data for “next-generation Artificial Intelligence.”

In 2014, Google began to replace the reCAPTCHA system with a simpler alternative called No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA: A checkbox saying “I’m not a robot.” Using a system of clues such as cookies — small pieces of data sent from a website and stored on a user’s computer by the user’s web browser — and mouse movements, the improved reCAPTCHA was able to distinguish non-human users from ‘bots almost instantaneously.

Now, reCAPTCHA won’t even ask you to lift a finger. And that’s probably a good thing — a researcher recently demonstrated a flaw that taps Google’s own services to bypass reCAPTCHA’s encryption.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Kyle Wiggers
Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
How to change margins in Google Docs
Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content --- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Read more
What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.

Read more
Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs
A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.

For the last few decades, Microsoft Word has been the de facto standard for word processors across the working world. That's finally starting to shift, and it looks like one of Google's productivity apps is the heir apparent. The company's Google Docs solution (or to be specific, the integrated word processor) is cross-platform and interoperable, automatically syncs, is easily shareable, and perhaps best of all, is free.

However, using Google Docs proves it still has a long way to go before it can match all of Word's features -- Microsoft has been developing its word processor for over 30 years, after all, and millions still use Microsoft Word. Will Google Docs' low barrier to entry and cross-platform functionality win out? Let's break down each word processor in terms of features and capabilities to help you determine which is best for your needs.
How does each word processing program compare?
To put it lightly, Microsoft Word has an incredible advantage over Google Docs in terms of raw technical capability. From relatively humble beginnings in the 1980s, Microsoft has added new tools and options in each successive version. Most of the essential editing tools are available in Google Docs, but users who are used to Word will find it limited.

Read more