Recaptcha/Google's pervasiveness on the internet is one of the most annoying things I repeatedly have to deal with. It's easy enough to block all google servers at the hosts level. But then you have lazy developers for government websites using it and need to enable them. They've just wound themselves so tightly into the internet it's near impossible to exist without interacting with their services.
Many government websites use reCAPTCHA. I do not have any choice in using it. If I were to block Google to avoid tracking, I could not function in society.
ReCAPTCHA demonstrates exactly what we all have to hide - being pervasively tracked by surveillance companies such as Google.
My only browsing activity that exits from my direct ISP's IP is my online banking VM, and that's only because one site got insistent about hard blocking everything else. These companies don't understand that they're screwing over real customers with this crap.
It's especially galling when my long lived static IP VPS exit [0] gets hassled. It's clear there isn't abusive usage from this IP, since I control it. I've had it for years, so it doesn't have a bad reputation. Yet these sites still want to fuck with me for their snake oil.
[0] Which doesn't win any awards for nym rotation, but at least hides my location and disassociates activity from my direct ISP IP.
I block Google domains on my main browser profile, and JavaScript by default.
I noticed if I encounter a recaptcha on a website, I just tend to abandon and seek information elsewhere. Last time I was presented with a recaptcha when setting a search filter on a website. No, thanks. This is too much of a pain to unblock everything and answer a recaptcha. I'll pass.
When I do answer a recaptcha in despair, this is a pain to do.
reCAPTCHA is a freaking nightmare, it's gotten worse and worse, it often has me go through two or three pages worth of image recognition puzzles before letting me log in. And since it's used on non-Google sites, it's nearly unavoidable.
reCAPTCHA is malware. If a site uses it, I (usually reluctantly) stop using the site. It's not even a privacy issue anymore - I'm logging into the site, usually so I can give them some money (bandcamp, humble bundle) - I just don't want Google all up in my business. Is that too much to ask these days? In order to not have some creepy giant corporation overseeing everything I do, I guess I just have to not use the Internet.
I've increasingly been getting literally impossible recaptchas lately.
And I don't mean that they're hard to make sense of or something. But if I encounter a recaptcha on one of my specific devices that's not logged into any Google accounts, recaptcha will simply reject all of my clearly correct answers. It'll ask me to pick all of the fire hydrants, show another screen, show me another, show me another, stop for a second, then tell me I failed and repeat. I pick everything correctly, but it fails because somewhere along the line, the absolute clowns at Google decided an auto-rejecting AI would be a good idea for a user validation system.
We need Google out of the internet. As their evil influence continues to expand, they'll use their powers to lock people who don't willingly buy into their ecosystem out of everything. And worse, since Google is the biggest lapdog around for government-led oppression of speech, they'll just filter out anything that doesn't agree with the status quo. And they'll be able to brush it away as an "oops, sorry, your behavior just makes you seem like a bot. Nothing we can do."
Google reCAPTCHA is the absolute worst. It makes me solve several puzzles very often, usually when I use a mobile network and I’m not logged in with any Google account. It’s so frustrating that most of the times I find a reCAPTCHA I give up before trying and just go elsewhere e.g. when a site uses reCAPTCHA for sign up or after the first failed login, I’ll most likely skip if I don’t absolutely need to access such website.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who’s getting tired!
When I have the time (or have failed ten bloody CAPTCHA's in a row), I sometimes shoot out emails to whatever website or service I am trying to use, to advocate for the removal of reCAPTCHA. Unfortunately, as long as only a few people are complaining though, a lot of websites will continue to paste in Google code blocks willy-nilly.
Lately I've been getting reCAPTCHA prompts all the time even though I'm not browsing in incognito mode and haven't cleared cookies. All I'm doing is running a very basic ad blocker, using Safari (which blocks third-party tracking), and very rarely loading a Google site. The most interaction I have with Google is when I end up having to use my corporate Google account as SSO for some other site.
Given that I'm not doing anything unusual, it really feels to me like reCAPTCHA, for all its complexity, boils down to "what's your history using Google software? Oh you rarely use it? I'm gonna give you a captcha". It didn't used to be this aggressive, but it's really ramped up in the past few weeks.
Google's recaptcha became cancer and I really wish companies would stop using it (I think that they are trying to block everyone who still uses a PC). The other day I wasn't even able to create a new reddit account because of it.
Google's reCAPTCHA makes it impossible to use large portions of the web once you take reasonable measures to protect your privacy. The challenge will continuously fail, despite you spending time to carefully solve it. This cruel behavior is described in a patent [1] by Kyle Adams of Juniper Networks.
More and more websites I need (including government and pseudo government websites, e.g. parking ticket payment that was outsourced) use Recaptcha. As a result, my government forces me to provide Google with free labour for basic functions, and additionally, it is possible for Google -- if they don't like me -- to declare me a robot and stop me from using those websites.
And .. what do you know? Google really doesn't like my tight uBlock Origin / Chameleon / Firefox Container / uMatrix / Privacy Badger setup, and every time I need to prove I'm not a robot (by providing free labour) I get longer and longer sequences.
Similarly, Facebook (through their WhatsApp acquisition) now decides who I get to talk to, because they have a monopoly on messaging where I live.
I only login to Google in a dedicated Firefox Container, and yes I'm getting really sick of ReCaptcha. It's amazingly user hostile at this point, and I suppose that it doesn't help that I need two or three attempts at this point to "pass" its challenges, because its machine learning algorithm and I disagree on what constitutes a "street sign" or something dumb like that. It's making me want to avoid websites that use ReCaptcha challenges altogether.
Additionally, ReCAPTCHA is worse than a metal detector, since in addition to being an inconvenience, it's performing unpaid labor for Google. It's more like a bouncer at the door, who won't let you in unless you grease his palm first. Just filthy corruption, plain and simple.
fuck recaptcha and all websites that make it impossible to use without it. the state of current things is insane. i can't even talk with the government or pay some bills without letting google spy on me. this is ridiculous.
reCAPTCHA on VPN is difficult, but on the Tor network, they are downright impossible. I've never been able to get past it, even after a few dozen painful attempts. That means Google services are entirely off-limits over Tor, even Search, which is a disgrace.
Again, Google is not forcing them to use ReCAPTCHA anywhere. You seem to have an issue with that program, so why are you taking it out on Google instead of on your government?
The reason I hate recaptcha: it's not just a rate-limit for one site, but for the entire web. Run a google dork? You'll have to find three more fire hydrants the next time you're signing up for a service. Install an ad blocker? Six more fire hydrants. Log out of google? Twelve more. Heaven forbid if I _actually_ scrape something. Hitting one site harder than an average user shouldn't force me to fill out captchas on every site until my "reputation score" or whatever is back up. Feels like social credit for web sites.
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