Monday 17 May 2021

Why captchas are getting harder

Why captchas are getting harder

It's not you — captchas really are getting harder. The worst part is that you’re partly to blame.

A captcha is a simple test that intends to distinguish between humans and computers. While the test itself is simple, there's a lot happening behind the scenes. The answers we give captchas end up being used to make AI smarter, thus ratcheting up the difficulty of future captcha tests.

But captchas can be broken by hackers. The tests we’re most familiar with already have been broken. Captcha makers try to stay ahead of the curve but have to balance increasing the difficulty of the test with making sure any person on earth — regardless of age, education, language, etc. — can still pass it. And eventually, they might have to phase out the test almost entirely.

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