How to solve (or avoid) captchas

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-06 20:01:59

Sorry to be in full-on moaning mode here, but I dislike them intensely. Just spent far too long on Thom Holwerda's OS News site, trying to log on so I could post something and failing abysmally; all because of those poorly defined pictures the size of a postage stamp that I was supposed to be able to read for signs of a motorbike / bus etc.

Has anyone else got any useful tips concerning how to deal with this?

Thanks in advance,

CP .

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-06 20:07:14)

marens · 2024-10-07 01:23:51

^ I think you have to be quick.

I didn't succeed right away because the pictures are very blurry.
I then quickly tagged three images containing a bus, followed by three boats.

It takes a little patience and it doesn't matter if you make a mistake you can always try again.

Colonel Panic wrote:

Has anyone else got any useful tips concerning how to deal with this?

Here we have an expert who has created several hundred spam accounts.

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-07 13:39:06

T hanks for your reply marens.

My close vision isn't the best so it's very difficult to simply move quickly on this. They appear to purposefully make the pictures difficult to interpret, I don't know why - is it to defeat OCR readers or something?

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-07 13:39:33)

marens · 2024-10-07 15:56:21

^ I think they just don't want spam (fake) accounts or limit them to an acceptable number.

This is probably why the reCaptcha test is harder to solve than usual.
Ask someone with better eyesight to take the test for you.
Good luck!

Off topic explanation

We have the best example on this forum.
Almost every day we get several new members like NameName or NameNameNumber.
Of course, not all such accounts are spam (fake) and deciding to remove them is difficult.
The only way is to monitor the activity of those members and if they do not log in (or have no posts) in the first few months, they should be removed.

It sounds simple, but it's not when you have limited resources.

If I remember correctly, @rbh said it was done every 6 months, but unfortunately I haven't seen any posts from him in a long time.
We can't expect @johnraff to do everything by himself, but I think that's a topic for Dev Discussions.

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-07 20:36:21

"Ask someone with better eyesight to take the test for you."

Thanks, but I live alone so little chance of that I'm afraid.

Bearded_Blunder · 2024-10-07 22:25:43

Has anyone else got any useful tips concerning how to deal with this?

Use the stay logged in permanently option whenever available...

They're an absolute pain, I have noticed they're way worse on systems with privacy settings turned up than say my sister's default Windows install, & even on sites where I don't usually see them visiting with a browser that's in "incognito" mode often provokes getting one I wouldn't see in normal mode.

marens · 2024-10-07 23:44:17

Colonel Panic wrote:

"Ask someone with better eyesight to take the test for you."
Thanks, but I live alone so little chance of that I'm afraid.

Maybe you can give the link to one of your friends and ask them to create an account with the user name you want.
Have him enter the Email you use.
The password will be sent to your Inbox.

Good luck!

johnraff · 2024-10-08 05:29:41

marens wrote:

Almost every day we get several new members like NameName or NameNameNumber.
Of course, not all such accounts are spam (fake) and deciding to remove them is difficult.
The only way is to monitor the activity of those members and if they do not log in (or have no posts) in the first few months, they should be removed.
It sounds simple, but it's not when you have limited resources.
If I remember correctly, @rbh said it was done every 6 months, but unfortunately I haven't seen any posts from him in a long time.
We can't expect @johnraff to do everything by himself, but I think that's a topic for Dev Discussions.

Off-Topic reply:

We get 8~10 new member registrations every day, but the vast bulk of them never verify. I guess that's because they can't collect the confirmation email with the login link. Every 2 or 3 weeks I open the admin console, filter the user list to those registered more than a week ago and not yet verified (it's usually ~200 or so by then) and delete them all. We devs agreed that a week was plenty of time for a new user to open their confirmation email and log in to activate their account. That clearout is not too much work, 10 min or so.

Some users make themselves obvious spammers with their first post. They are banned and the post is deleted. All moderators are doing this. In the rare case that they are genuine people, they can contact BL admin by email and get their account restored (this has never actually happened). Probably there are more of these than you think because they are deleted quite quickly.

That leaves users who activate their account but only lurk without posting at all, others who post maybe once or twice but never again...

That is a grey zone and we don't want to delete genuine accounts of people who just want to lurk. It's not a crime. The only bad cases are people who post aggressive or offensive content - luckily very few.

marens · 2024-10-08 14:14:21

^ Thanks for the detailed explanation, @johnraff.

Off-Topic reply:

I don't think I have access, but I assume you can see the IP addresses.
I'm sure most of the fake accounts (NameName or NameNameNumber) come from the same place or maybe I'm wrong?
Strange things started happening when one user got banned.

Of course, that's my guess and I have no proof.

novice · 2024-10-08 15:53:04

I don't know if this helps, but look to see if it's one of those that gives you the option of an audio captcha. On one forum a guy claimed that he got through those quite easily, even if he couldn't hear them properly and just typed anything in. Worth a try.

johnraff · 2024-10-09 02:29:39

marens wrote:

Off-Topic reply:I'm sure most of the fake accounts (NameName or NameNameNumber) come from the same place or maybe I'm wrong?
Strange things started happening when one user got banned.

I don't think that's the case. We get new registrations with all kinds of IP addresses, and various types of name. And they've been coming for years! It's nothing to do with any individual. In fact it was much worse a few years ago than it is now.

Now back to Captchas...

#1 2024-10-06 20:01:59

How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#2 2024-10-07 01:23:51

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#3 2024-10-07 13:39:06

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#4 2024-10-07 15:56:21

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#5 2024-10-07 20:36:21

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#6 2024-10-07 22:25:43

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#7 2024-10-07 23:44:17

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#8 2024-10-08 05:29:41

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#9 2024-10-08 14:14:21

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#10 2024-10-08 15:53:04

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

#11 2024-10-09 02:29:39

Re: How to solve (or avoid) captchas

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