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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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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