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As I have been testing sites, I have found reCAPTCHAs getting more and more difficult to read. Is it just me or are others having this problem too?

Along with this, I had a user this morning complain about receiving a Bristish Pound character in their reCAPTCHA. Of course the user didn't know what to do, even though I have message stating they can click the reload/refresh icon to get a new CAPTCHA.

Unfortunately, this implementation is on a site often used by people over 60 years of age, so more complicated or confusing CAPTCHAs are a problem, but the site still receives a lot of people attempting to produce spam.

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  • 21
    I've seen some CAPTCHA's that, I swear, are just white noise.
    – Grant
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:24
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    I totally agree with you on that one, it can definitely get confusing. I think what most people don't actually realize though, is that you only have to solve one of the 2 words correctly. So even if you get garbage as one of the words (I've seen some really hard stuff show up too, like math equations!), if you solve the non-garbage word, the other word is assumed to be correct. google.com/recaptcha/learnmore. But yes, extremely misleading.
    – JasonStoltz
    Apr 20, 2011 at 12:51
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    contestblogger.com/…
    – Prof. Falken
    Oct 14, 2011 at 11:57
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    Your post is dated 2009. It's 2012 now, and they are so much harder. This might be the last comment I can ever post.
    – Colonel Panic
    Aug 7, 2012 at 23:09
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    What are you talking about?
    – Nathan Osman
    Oct 4, 2013 at 2:04

16 Answers 16

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Despite the opinions presented until now I actually like the reCAPTCHA system. I like it mostly because I consider that it manages to solve two problems at once: verifying human identity and help digitalizes writings (For those of you who don't know here is why it uses 2 words and not one : reCAPTCHA philosophy

So I encourage all of you to try passing the reCAPTCHA tests as often as you can because you are really helping a good cause.

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  • I think they look the best too.
    – devios1
    Apr 4, 2009 at 15:00
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    @AlexDrenea these are annoying but I didn't realise there were a little more to them. clever stuff
    – Lea Hayes
    Sep 16, 2011 at 13:55
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    I'm adding recaptcha to my product right now, but while testing it I just failed 4 times. This is going to cost me a lot of users - too bad it's so ugly.
    – Kevin
    Jan 3, 2013 at 0:16
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    Today I tried to install reCAPTHA and can not pass any of them after several tries. I do not see the point in tool that prevents humans from sending info.
    – Petr Gladkikh
    Jan 15, 2015 at 16:32
  • reCAPTCHA is shocking me. I use a VPN and get it every time I use Google on a crappy page which seems way below Google's standards of quality (as with the reCAPTCHA itself, and many of Google's creations and inheritances in fact). "Click on all the storefronts"... all based in the US, my British ass doesn't even really know what a "storefront" is! Click tiles containing road signs. "Click all the mountains from these extremely blurry pictures while we generate them continuously for about 5 minutes"... damn, I'm missing the classic text CAPTCHAs so much right now.
    – Deji
    Mar 5, 2017 at 12:33
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The worst are the ones that are case sensitive. L, l, I, o O 0 ?

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    It's really hard to tell the difference between a lowercase x and an uppercase X that has been reduced in size randomly.
    – Grant
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:59
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I have a hard time reading most Captcha's, but I agree that reCAPTCHA's are a special nuisance.

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    I'm totally the opposite: I especially like reCAPTCHA's because they use real words and not just a random garble of letters and numbers. Personally I find that so much easier.
    – devios1
    Apr 6, 2009 at 13:33
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    Big time nuisance and I doubt reCAPTCHA does a better job than any other less annoying Captchas outthere
    – AKKAweb
    Jan 18, 2012 at 18:19
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Yes, Captchas are getting more difficult to read.

Image of CAPTCHA http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/1253/picture3rs8.png

I can't find the link right now but I believe the Microsoft Passport (MSN and Hotmail) are the hardest ones to break.

The problem is that whenever software gets better at detecting the text, the text has to become more difficult to read.

The irony I guess is that CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" but it won't be long for computers to catch up and they become too hard for the majority of humans to read. At this time they'll go away and some other version of a CAPTCHA will be used.

Perhaps photo based CAPTCHAS using googles image labelling system?

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    That's actually one of the easiest captcha's I've read. The ones on this StackOverflow are a lot worse IMO.
    – Paul Stovell
    Jan 30, 2009 at 20:27
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    I hate when you're absolutely sure you type the right thing and it tells you it's wrong!
    – devios1
    Apr 4, 2009 at 14:59
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Ironic, because although computers are certainly getting smarter, people are probably getting dumber, too.

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    People aren't getting dumber. More dumb people now have access to the internet.
    – Grant
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:29
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    People are getting dumber in the general case. We keep making everything "safer", which means that dumb people have a better chance of surviving long enough to reproduce. That brings the average down over time.
    – Brian Knoblauch
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:33
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    Add to that the fact that dumb people tend to reproduce at higher rates, since smart people think ahead and realize , for example, "I can't afford to support more than 1 child."
    – gnovice
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:37
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    @Brian Knoblauch: I am in favor of the Darwin awards, too. :-D
    – Tomalak
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:37
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    Hey there's an idea: exclusive membership for intelligent people only, by having to answer some IQ question. :D
    – devios1
    Apr 4, 2009 at 15:01
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I think they are getting harder, I know I tend to fail every captcha I try at least once, sometimes twice. There are good alternatives emerging though. For example, Geoff Appleby shows nine photos and gives a text description for you to select three of them (scroll down to the comments form).

Such a system would be very accessible to the profiles you outlined (the photos could be quite big). Also a lot easier to implement.

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Definitely getting harder now. My most recent one had something completely indistinguishable, next to 'are' written upside down.

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I find reCAPTCHA's to be the absolute worst for usability. I often avoid sites that use them.

I don't mind that sites need to do these tests, but they don't need to be so near-impossible to figure out.

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  • You've managed to gain 2,500k rep on a site that uses them. :-) Very sparsely, though.
    – Tomalak
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:42
  • hehe, yeah I know, but the quality of the rest of this site convinced me to overlook it (plus I think I've only seen it once) ;-)
    – scunliffe
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:55
  • They're not that bad, come on. It usually gives you a few tries. ;)
    – devios1
    Apr 4, 2009 at 15:02
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    If I can't get it on the first try, then the process is flawed. The end user shouldn't have to struggle to complete it, only the hacker trying to decipher it programatically.
    – scunliffe
    Apr 4, 2009 at 20:55
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Perhaps reCAPTCHA, as it starts to run lower on words that people get correctly, starts paring harder and harder 'unknkown' words as people filter out all the easy ones?

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  • This is my assumption as well. I presume that most of the remaining words in their "unknown" category are ones that no one (or almost no one) has been able to identify.
    – eggsyntax
    Jun 24, 2012 at 0:57
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I think eventually CAPTCHA is going to stop being feasible and there's going to have to be some kind of universally recognized "passport" system for websites. Some kind of account that you pay a couple bucks for and it identifies you as a human when you sign up for a website.

Then, if you start using that account for your spam robots, you can get banned universally. Sites could even retroactively clean up posts based on those bans. shrug Just a thought

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    An old idea of mine as well. I always said, there should be a fee for sending mails as well. Not big, something like 0,01Euro, but enough to turn away spammers. I would gladly pay 1E for every 100 send mails. Same thing with sites (although cleaning spam retroactively doesn't solve the problem)
    – Rook
    Apr 4, 2009 at 2:22
  • I guess some what similar to OpenId.
    – Darryl Hein
    Apr 4, 2009 at 3:06
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    Problem with this is it's very big-brotherish. What do you do if your account gets hijacked? Are you banned from the internet forever?
    – devios1
    Apr 4, 2009 at 15:03
  • Now what you could do is have a universal captcha-verification that might need to be reverified once a year or something. Heck that would be simple enough to make an API for, maybe I'll do that. ;)
    – devios1
    Apr 4, 2009 at 15:04
  • 1) If you're account gets hijacked, it would mean your credit card has been stolen, which is not 'our' problem from the perspecticve of this system. 2) Problem with what you're suggesting is that the spammer then just needs to have a human do a captcha whenever their universal id gets banned.
    – Kevin Laity
    Apr 4, 2009 at 15:27
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I've been identified as not-human several times by the Stack Overflow blog comment captcha. Now I just keep requesting new captchas until I get one I can read. Usually only takes ~3 tries.

Update: According to Ben Maurer, the Chief Engineer at reCAPTCHA, who commented on my blog about this, over 96% of reCAPTCHAs are solved correctly. So maybe we as a group are just getting dumber?

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    96% is solved after 20 refreshes. NOT ACCEPTABLE.
    – AKKAweb
    Jan 11, 2012 at 12:34
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    @CaboONE I don't see how 96% correct translates into "solved after 20 refreshes."
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jan 11, 2012 at 12:49
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reCAPTCHA will always get harder.

As they make tools to break reCAPTCHA, they will be using the same technology to help digitize text, therefore only the ones that the latest technology cannot read will be used as a CAPTCHA.

Its spy vs spy, except its a win win for reCAPTCHA and human knowledge.

The only problem they face is if they have a reader that is so good it never fails, reCAPTCHA will no longer work, but it would be a good problem to have for digitization of human knowledge.

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Quite a few downloading sites have just stopped using captchas. All you really need to do is log the IP address of the client and stop giving them access for x minutes.

Same thing can be used for passwords. Did the user mistype his password 3 times? Let them wait five minutes to try again. And give them the option to refresh it by sending them an e-mail.

About time we get rid of those captchas. Computers and algorithms have become fast enough to crack even the hardest ones. While only making it frustrating for people.

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  • IP limiting won't do a thing against a spammer using a botnet.
    – ceejayoz
    Feb 7, 2012 at 17:30
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Yes. It is getting harder. If everyone realized how reCAPTCHA works, everyone should pass even with an unreadable word. reCAPTCHA always shows 2 words: one of the words reCAPTCHA knows its ASCII representation through OCR, the another, you can fail, because reCAPTCHA doesn't know the correct answer. When I find a too difficult reCAPTCHA I simply type "verydifficultword" along with the readable word.

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  • Does reCAPTCHA ever use your guess at the unreadable word in a future 'readable' word someone else's future reCAPTCHA? (Though it could work ok if it required multiple duplicate guesses)
    – Grant
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:21
  • No, in my experience. The reCAPTCHA site (recaptcha.net/learnmore.html) does not tell anything about it, but it can be implemented in the future.
    – Jader Dias
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:30
  • The problem is then that in the display there is nothing that says... "hey" one of these words we don't even know... feel free to take a wild guess - we won't hold it against you. ;-)
    – scunliffe
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:31
  • @scunliffe - that's kinda the point. They're trying to get people to OCR their text.
    – Eli
    Jan 30, 2009 at 18:40
  • That's very bad behaviour, because it makes it harder for reCaptcha to correctly read those texts. Against such behavior they show words to more than one user.
    – Georg Schölly
    Jan 30, 2009 at 19:14
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Yes, it is getting harder. What ever may be the good thing it does, it should be usable. I tried 3 or 4 times on their audio captcha and failed each time. Though captchas try to solve a real issue, for those who can not see the captcha image and have to rely on audio captchas it is a big problem. Also not all the sites which uses captcha provides audio options. In any case, I think we'll have to keep proving to these machines that we are indeed humans for a long time to come.

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The thing to keep in mind about ReCAPTCHA is that they are images actually scanned from real books and articles. As such you have to be aware that funky punctuation and stuff can make it in--it's not just words. For example I've seen partial words that end in a hyphen (that obviously occurred on the end of a line) as well as dollar-signs, numbers (like 1. Something), etc.

I find if you bear in mind the origin it makes a heck of a lot more sense and is easier to solve.

Also interestingly, you only need to get one of the reCAPTCHA words right, because the other is used to aid in the digitization. However you won't know which is which. :)

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    I just did 11 in a row at recaptcha.net/learnmore.html. Some of them were a little tricky, but I didn't fail a single one. I don't know what you guys are complaining about.
    – devios1
    Apr 6, 2009 at 13:28

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