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posted ago by Narg ago by Narg +25 / -1

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/11/23828906/goodbye-captchas-bots-outsmart-you-at-proving-theyre-not-a-bot

That post links to: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384228-bots-are-better-at-beating-are-you-a-robot-tests-than-humans-are/, which requires registration for full access. From the New Scientist article:

Bots are better and faster than humans at online CAPTCHA tests designed to keep them out of websites. The finding calls into question whether we should continue using these kind of security measures, given how much frustration they can cause for people.

A cat-and-mouse game has played out for almost two decades between website developers who want to keep bots out of their sites and the hackers who want to bypass those protections using these troublesome chunks of computer code to scrape content, create fake accounts and post fraudulent comments or reviews.

Tests designed to be easy for humans to pass, but to trip up software, have long been a feature of websites. Over time, types of CAPTCHA – which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – have become more advanced, and gradually trickier to solve, at least for us.