Google's reCAPTCHA v2 just labor exploitation, boffins say
www.theregister.com
Web puzzles don't protect against bots, but humans have spent 819 million unpaid hours solving them

Research Findings:

  • reCAPTCHA v2 is not effective in preventing bots and fraud, despite its intended purpose
  • reCAPTCHA v2 can be defeated by bots 70-100% of the time
  • reCAPTCHA v3, the latest version, is also vulnerable to attacks and has been beaten 97% of the time
  • reCAPTCHA interactions impose a significant cost on users, with an estimated 819 million hours of human time spent on reCAPTCHA over 13 years, which corresponds to at least $6.1 billion USD in wages
  • Google has potentially profited $888 billion from cookies [created by reCAPTCHA sessions] and $8.75–32.3 billion per each sale of their total labeled data set
  • Google should bear the cost of detecting bots, rather than shifting it to users

“The conclusion can be extended that the true purpose of reCAPTCHA v2 is a free image-labeling labor and tracking cookie farm for advertising and data profit masquerading as a security service,” the paper declares.

In a statement provided to The Register after this story was filed, a Google spokesperson said: “reCAPTCHA user data is not used for any other purpose than to improve the reCAPTCHA service, which the terms of service make clear. Further, a majority of our user base have moved to reCAPTCHA v3, which improves fraud detection with invisible scoring. Even if a site were still on the previous generation of the product, reCAPTCHA v2 visual challenge images are all pre-labeled and user input plays no role in image labeling.”

  • someguy3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    4 months ago

    I kinda figured. It was annoying to do one, but then they wanted you to do two or three and that’s absurd. Whenever it comes up now, I usually just close out.

    • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      they wanted you to do two or three and that’s absurd

      Yea how about 20

      • LucidNightmare@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        VPN? Google will just go in a loop with these things, so I just stopped using Google completely.

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        if you have to do that many, you either have some privacy setting on or on a flagged ip given from a VPN

          • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            its abnormal to them because vpns are often also used by bad actors. your use is not abnormal but its a there are other people misusing it making it worse for everyone else.

            • Landsharkgun@midwest.socialEnglish
              01·
              4 months ago

              Wow, way to blame individuals who take basic precautions instead of the corporations who are blantly invading your privacy. Good job making the world a better place, bud.

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    Getting served a captcha often results in me closing the tab. I’m not doing stupid puzzles for you.

  • Mubelotix@jlai.luEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I bypassed 35000 google recaptcha v2 using bots. Don’t ever rely on this for security