[Njtechdiv] Google Has Finally Killed the CAPTCHA
Mario Brusco
mrb620 at hotmail.com
Sat Mar 18 16:14:02 UTC 2017
this article from the Top Tech Tidbits newsletter from Flying Blind, I
think warrants mention because it is a big deal for us blind computer
users, but bear in mind that it is a current achievement and is probably
not widely accepted yet.
Google Has Finally Killed the CAPTCHA
http://gizmodo.com/google-has-finally-killed-the-captcha-1793190374
Rhett Jones
Saturday 5:47pm
Filed to: Captcha Death
CAPTCHA's are an irritating but necessary evil. The system that is used
to verify whether or not a user is human has been around a while and it
had to evolve because machines were getting better at reading the text
than humans. With its latest iteration, Google says you'll no longer
have to input anything at all.
Invisible CAPTCHA's are the latest development in the "Completely
Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." Google
acquired reCaptcha back in 2009.
It updated the system in 2013 to allow for the ubiquitous "I'm not a
robot" checkbox that's all over the internet. That version worked by
determining the user's humanity through their clicking style. If the
click seemed fishy, a more elaborate test would be offered. But the
Invisible CAPTCHA is able to recognize that a user is not a bot simply
by analyzing their browsing behavior.
In a video, the company explained "Powering these advances is a
combination of machine learning and advanced risk analysis that adapt to
new and emerging threats." But what's in it for Google?
When the search giant initially bought reCaptcha it was actually for the
purpose of integrating it into its giant book scanning project. The
technology was great for digitizing books that were illegible to
Google's transcription system. But its unclear what Google gains by
continuing to improve the software.
Shuman Ghosemajumder, a former Google employee tells Popular Science,
"Google in general-and this is certainly a philosophy that we adhered to
when I was there-believed that anything that is good for the internet,
is good for Google." In this case, a "more frictionless" internet is
good for everybody. But don't count out the possibility that Google is
improving its machine learning capabilities through your behaviors. And
Ghosemajumder points out that Google knows about the past behavior of
users when they're logged in, which
would make the system more accurate. That could be a small incentive for
some people to ensure they log in.
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