So Much For CAPTCHA Then - Bots Can Complete Them Quicker Than Humans
The Register, Tuesday, August 15,2023
Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart - better known as the ubiquitous CAPTCHA we see standing athwart the doors to many websites - may now be a misnomer as researchers have found that computers are much better at completing them.
The bot defense measure dates back to 1997 and the tortured acronym 2003, with the technology starting out as a distorted series of letters and/or numbers. Google's implementation, reCAPTCHA, eventually did away with much of these shenanigans to make the browser identify low-risk human users in the background, but the image verification method still pops up occasionally if risk cannot be ascertained.
Normal people see them as a time-waster, web devs see them as a crucial defense against bots, and criminals see them just as another obstacle to be hurdled.