Had enough of verifying you're NOT a robot? Google does away with time consuming 'captcha' codes on websites

  • Captcha codes are designed to tell the difference between man and machine
  • They work by asking you to type a phrase a robot would be hard-pressed to read 
  • Launch of Google's recaptacha v3 means users will no longer need type in codes

Google is doing away with the time consuming tests on websites that ask you to verify you're not a robot.

Captcha codes - which ask you to identify words or pictures - are designed to tell the difference between man and machine.

The launch of Google's recaptcha v3 means users will no longer need to type in codes or tick boxes as the system will pick up suspicious traffic by itself.

Scroll down for video  

Google is doing away with the time consuming tests on websites that ask you to verify that you are a real person. Captchas work by asking you to type a phrase that a robot would be hard-pressed to read

Google is doing away with the time consuming tests on websites that ask you to verify that you are a real person. Captchas work by asking you to type a phrase that a robot would be hard-pressed to read

WHAT ARE CAPTCHA CODES? 

Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) has become the standard term for simple human-or-robot tests.

Captchas work by asking you to type a phrase that a robot would be hard-pressed to read.

Commonly, these Captcha phrases are .gif pictures of scrambled words, but can also be .mp3 voice recordings.

These pictures and recordings are very hard for conventional software programs to understand, and robots are usually unable to type the phrase in response to the picture or recording.  

Advertisement

Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) has become the standard term for simple human-or-robot tests.

Captchas work by asking you to type a phrase that a robot would be hard-pressed to read.

Commonly, these Captcha phrases are .gif pictures of scrambled words, but can also be .mp3 voice recordings.

These pictures and recordings are very hard for conventional software programs to understand, and robots are usually unable to type the phrase in response to the picture or recording.  

The new Captcha system launches today and will run in the background of a website producing scores from 0.1 (bad) to 1 (good).

Site admins can decide how their websites act depending on these scores.

This means that browsers will not have to bother verifying themselves every time.

'First, you can set a threshold that determines when a user is let through or when further verification needs to be done, for example, using two-factor authentication and phone verification,' Google said in a blog post.

'Second, you can combine the score with your own signals that reCAPTCHA can't access—such as user profiles or transaction histories.

'Third, you can use the reCAPTCHA score as one of the signals to train your machine learning model to fight abuse.'

Captcha codes - which ask you to identify words or pictures - are designed to tell the difference between man and machine 

Captcha codes - which ask you to identify words or pictures - are designed to tell the difference between man and machine 

Most site admins will probably be glad to take control over how their site reacts to traffic, writes Engadget.

Last year a shocking study showed that computers can now successfully crack the test.

This suggests that Captcha tests no longer offer the protection they used to. 

Researchers from Vicarious, a technology firm based in San Francisco have developed an algorithm that can be trained to solve complex Captchas, including those used by PayPal and Google.

Speaking to ABC News, Dr Miguel Lazaro Gredilla, one of the researchers who worked on the study, said: 'We just have to accept that, as computer vision systems improve, traditional text-based Captcha systems no longer offer the protection they used to.'

The researchers took inspiration from the brain to develop the algorithm, focusing on 'contour continuity' - the way the human brain can distinguish the edges of an object, even if that object is partially blocked by another.

The algorithm they created, called the 'recursive cortical network' contains just a few processing layers. 

 

The comments below have not been moderated.

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.