[Poll] What do you think of the forum's usage of reCaptcha?

[0t3p0t]

I probably won't make changes in the near future, but I've been thinking about the captcha issue, and I wonder what people think about reCaptcha.

Where reCaptcha is used now, something is required, and AFAIK all other captcha services can be OCRed and are therefore useless. End-users often like SolveMedia, but those seem really easy to OCR. I actually really like the image classification approach on a theoretical level, though I hate relying on NSA-lite Google, and occasionally on Tor they throw you into some insane black hole of difficulty (though you can change your Tor exit to fix that).

I vote for this "I don't mind it too much mainly because they're not THAT difficult" but my only concern is that it is not supported with browsers like Operamini. I've been using Operamini browsers all the time on my mobile phone because it saves battery and data usage but the problem is I think that was way back August 2017 me and my friends are trying to access the forum but seems we need to answer the reCaptcha and we prefer SolveMedia because it is working on Operamini browsers. I also had an experience of like my Chrome browser keep on saying "Cannot contact reCaptcha". Hope we had a choice on which method we should use on loging in either SolveMedia or reCaptcha for our convenience.

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[Quickseller]

I recently saw a thread in which someone’s account was banned because they had been inactive since the 2015 hack, so I presume the other accounts that meet this criteria are also banned.

The above along with the email security notification should resolve most of the security issues with the 2015 hack.

It is my understanding that the ReCaptcha was implemented because of the 2015 hack and the bot spammers.

It is only a matter of time before spammers start using mTerk to solve the existing reCaptcha. If we implemented a weaker reCaptcha that doesn’t use JavaScript then some spammers might be able to beat it, however this would also allow you to learn more about the spammers and additional countermeasures can be implemented if necessary.

My biggest concern about requiring JavaScript to login is it effectively makes it impossible (or very difficult and you must really know what you’re doing, eg have very advanced technical knowledge) to stay anonymous.

[aditya12]

All of them are really very easy and most of the times i dont have to solve them..but yes they may waste 10 seconds

[Vod]

Honestly, I don't mind the captchas, and they are not that difficult, but I've only ever seen captchas in the login page... (?_?)

The login page is the only page it is on. 

[Quickseller]

For people who log in and out frequently. This is not an issue for individuals such as myself, who are pretty much always logged in.
As long as it combats some forms of attacks, it is fine as is.

I agree.  Knowing it annoys the account farmers is good enough for me to support it and I've only had to solve it once so far. 

In the grand scheme of things I don’t think this really affects account farmers very much.

A smart farmer will make many posts on one account before moving onto their next account. I would say this causes a farmer to spend nominally additional time logging in and the affect will be unnoticeable.

[pixie85]

I recently saw a thread in which someone’s account was banned because they had been inactive since the 2015 hack, so I presume the other accounts that meet this criteria are also banned.

The above along with the email security notification should resolve most of the security issues with the 2015 hack.

It is my understanding that the ReCaptcha was implemented because of the 2015 hack and the bot spammers.

It is only a matter of time before spammers start using mTerk to solve the existing reCaptcha. If we implemented a weaker reCaptcha that doesn’t use JavaScript then some spammers might be able to beat it, however this would also allow you to learn more about the spammers and additional countermeasures can be implemented if necessary.

My biggest concern about requiring JavaScript to login is it effectively makes it impossible (or very difficult and you must really know what you’re doing, eg have very advanced technical knowledge) to stay anonymous.

I agree that old, unused accounts should be locked before they fall victim of hackers and abusers and in most cases it's only a matter of time before it happens.
If someone who hasn't used his account for 3+ years will decide to return (which IMO is a rare case) they can always sign a message to message a moderator.
It would greatly reduce the amount of work they have to put into investigating hacked accounts.

[aTriz]

Not really a problem for me, but makes the people with alt accounts waste more time. I know it was intended for security, but had a second purpose.

[Immakillya]

Not a problem at all. It's to me. Besides, it takes only seconds to solve them. It's just account farmers are annoyed with this function because they have to do Captchas everytime they log in to their othet accounts. Anyway, if it's for security. Then why would i oppose that? Actually you can stay and keep your account always logged in. Just check the always logged in. That's it. You don't have to solve captchas if you are really annoyed at it. What i really don't like about captchas, typing words and letters. Those really annoys me. But i never encountered that in this forum yet. Hope not.😄😄

[cellard]

Honestly, I don't mind the captchas, and they are not that difficult, but I've only ever seen captchas in the login page... (?_?)

The login page is the only page it is on. 

Do you know how to set a noScript exception on the login page only?

When I try to put the login page url, noScript automatically adds "bitcoin.org" as an exception it's entirety. It looks like you aren't allowed to add subdomains.

I hate solve the reCaptcha, but manually turning on and off javascript is an added annoyance that could be automated with noScript, if noScript allowed to add the login url.

[pixie85]

I don't mind solving them at all and they are fairly easy. I do it twice a day at most so it's 3 additional seconds that I have to spend before accessing the forum.
Does it annoy farmers? I think they don't care and wouldn't care even if they had to solve 5 captchas before logging in.

[Joel_Jantsen]

I don't mind solving them at all and they are fairly easy. I do it twice a day at most so it's 3 additional seconds that I have to spend before accessing the forum.
Does it annoy farmers? I think they don't care and wouldn't care even if they had to solve 5 captchas before logging in.

I'm not an account farmer but it annoys me.I'll tell you why,
 1.I somewhat feel we're commercialising the platform by using Google's services.I mean we could go for another open-sourced captcha solving service.
 2.I feel I'm obliged to solve captaches (imagine how you feel when you're forcefully asked to watch adds before accessing the content).
 3.There could be a.better b.simpler bot preventive mechanism.Although a lot of members would disagree with m opinion here but that's just me.

[se150401317]

I think for the forum's sake, its okay to go through it. Although I do think it as annoying because, because for some reason, I have to solve it every time as my browser clears all cookies and I have to sign in every time I come here.

[andamers]

i get this error "Cannot contact reCAPTCHA. Check your connection and try again."
and some times when solve it right i get wrong answer (i get same pic when register and when sign up solve boxes work in register and get error when sign in )

[cellard]

i get this error "Cannot contact reCAPTCHA. Check your connection and try again."
and some times when solve it right i get wrong answer (i get same pic when register and when sign up solve boxes work in register and get error when sign in )

This happens to me when using Tor a lot of times, so to the annoyance of the captcha itself, and to the annoyance of having to turn on then off javascript to log in, you have to add the fact that it takes several attempts of changing IP with the "New Tor circuit for this site" option a bunch of times until you find one that Google hasn't banned. So yeah, not very Tor friendly this reCaptcha.

[Ucy]

Only problem I had with the reCaptcha was losing the great Forum layout i enjoyed on my Opera browser and the difficulty solving the puzzle .. I noticed nobody was going through  thesame problem as me so I moved on and have really gotten used to things. So everything is fine now. Forum security is all that matters.
I appreciate!

[imstillthebest]

I probably won't make changes in the near future, but I've been thinking about the captcha issue, and I wonder what people think about reCaptcha.

Where reCaptcha is used now, something is required, and AFAIK all other captcha services can be OCRed and are therefore useless. End-users often like SolveMedia, but those seem really easy to OCR. I actually really like the image classification approach on a theoretical level, though I hate relying on NSA-lite Google, and occasionally on Tor they throw you into some insane black hole of difficulty (though you can change your Tor exit to fix that).

solving recaptcha on the phone is hard and it takes much of my ram and as a result im oftenly kicked out on my browser and  i need to solve the recaptcha again but it works fine on desktop and laptop. i think the letters captcha are more easier and consumes less ram.

[kenkoy]

ReCaptcha is fine for me as a regular user here in forum. Pictures are excellent way of captcha. It is easy that it comes as regular part of logging in. Pictures are better than those captchas with alpha numerical characters as I find it sometimes unreadable. The admin and moderators are doing a great job to make this forum better.

[rjbtc2017]

Agreed with some of the posters here. It is annoying sometimes if you use your phone and If it will prevent BOT or API ( i don't know if this is possible) to login it will prevent robot users and also prevents the forum to easily accessed and it make sure that everyone is human.

[pinoyden]

Agreed with some of the posters here. It is annoying sometimes if you use your phone and If it will prevent BOT or API ( i don't know if this is possible) to login it will prevent robot users and also prevents the forum to easily accessed and it make sure that everyone is human.

yes its possible, it  will prevent bots and that is the main reason why captcha's are invented  and admins/website owners need to install it on the login page or any kinds of joining/signing up form,  to ensure  that everyone is a human and not robots that will likely spam and automate the process of the system because that is considered cheating in any way and they are too lazy to do it themselves.

[The_Dark_Knight]

The reCaptcha is insanely incisive when you are using Tor. It asks you to make the "street sign" and "vehicles" ones which are tolerable, but then there comes additional rounds of "cars", which are the ones where you have to click on car pictures that fade to white in slow motion several times until the system considers you not a bot. It is honestly annoying. The fact that you have to turn on javascript on then off manually is also annoying.

Btw, I don't know what the hell is up with the latest Tor upgrade, but the noScript button has disappeared. I was considering whitelisting the login url (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=login) but I can't find the button anymore.

The Noscript logo disappearing from the browser is a known bug I think, I do not use Tor but in the Firefox browser the same happened to me so I uninstalled noscript and then installed it again and everything worked perfectly, maybe you will need to do the same in order to white list bitcointalk.org, and I will also agree that the captcha where the cars fade is very annoying especially when my connection is slow.