Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit | Web puzzles don't protect against bots, but humans have spent 819 million unpaid hours solving them

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1065 points – Google's reCAPTCHAv2 is just labor exploitation, boffins say
theregister.com

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."

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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.

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

Yea how about 20

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

No. But it's also not like I get 20 constantly, it was just the worst I've seen. Usually it's 2 to 5, I think.

I assume they're just collecting data on how many are users willing to do.

One time I did five in a row, because I use VPNs for everything, and realized after the 5th time that it would have been easier to just use bing so I do that first now. Google has turned into my last last resort, which is quite funny, because that’s where Bing used to be. Lmao

Whenever I'm on a private window the captchas just keep on coming. Trying to reset your Steam password via the program will also trigger an infinite loop of captchas, you HAVE to use a browser.

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

Well yah of course I do. Why the hell is that 'abnormal'?

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.

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.

point where i blame the individuals, the blame is clearly on the bad actors (e.g bots)

Most people don't, most bots do. You look more like a bot, so you get extra challenges.

Or google knows you will out up with it and want the most interaction it can get from you.

I tried to order some components on Digikey a few months ago and I’m still mentally scarred. Probably did a few hundred of those things over the course of 2 weeks.

That’s because you’re shady.

They knew I was committing crimes with my adblocker.

Had this when at uni, mostly due to the amount of requests coming from a single IP

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Some captchas have also just gotten obvious AI training. "Click on the living being in this image", "Select every image of the same object as in this example image". And the images you have to select look obviously AI generated.

Heh, I got one just the other day "Select the images containing structures built by people" lmao

Im surprised that this is in the news right now. This has been acknowledged as fact for a decade or so.

Relevant 1053

I still don’t get this one even after being linked to it so many times 😌🤣

Someday you will, and you'll be one of the lucky 10.000 that day.

Things that are common knowledge for you is not common knowledge for everyone and vice versa.

Instead of making fun of people for not knowing things, you should take the opportunity to teach so that you can get these fun moments of discovery and learning.

😮l made fun of people that did not know something?

At a certain point I did like 10 of them, and then ended up closing the page, cause it never let me in, all because I was on a vpn

Funny thing is they stop asking if you do them really slowly. Almost as if to tell you, you‘re too inefficient to even be an unpaid intern or something. Anyway, if they annoy you, take your time.

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