CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by cesarb on Friday November 27, 2020 @07:18AM (#25228069)

> Even Google has taken to occasionally popping up CAPTCHAs just so I can see search results!

The most annoying one for me recently has been stackoverflow. The most basic use of stackoverflow (other than arriving through a web search) is to use its own search bar to search for something. Every time I do so, it asks for a captcha. It would make some sense to ask for a captcha when asking or answering a question, but why ask for a captcha when searching? And it's always the first search after opening the browser (the browser is set up to clear cookies on close), so it's not some sort of rate limiting.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by segfaultbuserr on Friday November 27, 2020 @11:23AM (#25229957)

Search is restricted because it's an expensive operation and prone to abuse. This practice is not just found at Stack Exchange, now GitHub doesn't even display the full code search result to visitors. The only option is to log in (if you are already an established SE/GitHub user and doesn't mind the web tracking)...

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by ric2b on Sunday November 29, 2020 @02:34PM (#25247393)

Even if search is expensive you can just rate limit it, a captcha is a dumb solution.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by smichel17 on Friday November 27, 2020 @08:28AM (#25228526)

Yep, and this resulted in me just searching duckduckgo for the stackoverflow page I wanted to find, instead.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by paulryanrogers on Friday November 27, 2020 @09:57AM (#25229163)

Probably too stop automated abuse and reduce unnecessary searches. Search can be expensive.

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