reCAPTCHA: Easy on Humans, Tough on Bots

Arpan SinhaCyber Security

Have you ever come across such a thing before?!

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You must be wondering how will this thing decide whether you’re a robot or not? You just have to click, and a bot can easily click, right? Well, here’s the answer.

CAPTCHAs have long relied on the inability of bots to solve distorted text. However, according to Google, the current level of Artificial Intelligence can easily solve primitive CAPTCHA. Therefore, they’ve given an even better and improved option, the reCAPTCHA.

As the name suggests, reCAPTCHA takes into account the entire engagement of CAPTCHA of a user to determine whether the user is actually a human or not. Thus this is a more effective tool against robots.

Google, also claims that reCAPTCHA offers more than just spam protection. “Every time our CAPTCHAs are solved, that human effort helps digitize text, annotate images, and build machine-learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.”  The reCAPTCHA is easy for people and tough for bots.  It has many advantages.

Advantages of reCAPTCHA (Google)
  • Advanced Security: Since reCAPTCHA uses your previous records of how you’ve solved CAPTCHAs, and then verifies you as a human, thus security has reached the next level. According to Google, “reCAPTCHA is for security. Armed with state-of-the-art technology, it always stays at the forefront of spam and abuse fighting trends. reCAPTCHA is on guard for you, so you can rest easy.”
  • Ease of Use: Users just have to click a button to prove that they’re not robots, thus it is very easy to use. According to Google, “Purposefully designed. And actively aware. reCAPTCHA knows when to be easy on people and hard on bots. Our easy CAPTCHAs are a breeze for legitimate users.”
  • Creation of Value: Not only does it use your previous records, but also applies the human bandwidth to benefit people everywhere, according to Google. According to them, “Millions of CAPTCHAs are solved by people every day. reCAPTCHA makes positive use of this human effort by channelling the time spent solving CAPTCHAs into digitizing text, annotating images, and building machine-learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.”