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Is this the end for annoying Captchas? Technology backed by Google and Apple could make the security test designed to eradicate online bots obsolete
- More and more people are signing up for Privacy Pass, which means they’re only solving one
- Technology is backed by tech giants like Apple and Google and others
Captchas could be on the wane after tech companies finally started coming up with alternatives.
More and more users are signing up for Privacy Pass, which means they only have to solve one Captcha.
They then get a digital token that is stored in their browser and tells other websites that they are human.
The technology is supported by Apple and Google, among others, and could soon spell the end of Captchas, the Washington Post reported.
The term Captcha was coined in 2003 and stands for ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’.
They are designed to prevent spam and usually involve users clicking boxes to identify which contain an image.
More and more users are signing up for Privacy Pass, which means they only have to solve one Captcha
More and more users are signing up for Privacy Pass, which means they only need to solve one captcha (stock image).
A typical puzzle might show a person several images and ask them to click on all the images that show an everyday object such as a bus or fire hydrant.
But their use is so widespread that users have to fill them out several times a day with surveys showing that they take an average of 25 seconds to solve.
Bots have also become more sophisticated at bypassing captchas, making them irrelevant.
Privacy Pass is developed by CloudFlare, an online security company, and comes as a browser extension that users can download.
Similar software is being developed by Ticketmaster, which has its servers talk to a user’s computer to identify who is a legitimate user and who isn’t.
One way would be to look for slight differences in fonts between different browsers that show it is controlled by a bot and not a real person.
The movement of the mouse is also another clue, as people often play with it in a way that is difficult to copy.
Graham-Cumming, Cloudflare’s chief technology officer, said captchas “have been broken to some degree for a long time.”
He said, “Captchas are such a nightmare for people that something better had to come out.”