The simplicity of it is logic defying. It used to be that you had to find crosswalks or move puzzle pieces or type blurred letters and numbers, but NOW all the sudden I can just click a box and HEY!, I’m human?
That’s hardly the Turing Test I’d expected.
It tests whether your mouse movement looks human–we’re really bad at things like moving in straight lines, so it’s pretty evident from a mouse movement log whether you’re a human or a simple bot. It also takes a bunch of auxiliary browser/environment data into account. It’s not perfect, but it’s complicated enough to defeat to provide fine protection against cheap spam.
Shitty situation if you are used to using hotkeys and only use mouse cursor when no other means are available by moving it using numpad.
Nah that’s different as well. What they are filtering out is
- a mouse teleporting to the exact center of the checkbox
- a mouse smoothly gliding in a straight line to the center if the checkbook
- a mouse traveling in a straight line to the center of the checkbook with some momentary stutters to add noise
Et cetera. Humans are much noiser than anything a python script will spit out. Of course there are ways to get around this, like recording and reenacting a human mouse movement, but the point of any capcha system is to make it significantly more difficult to bot, not impossible.
Yeah, never thought about this before, but how do blind users deal with captchas?
There are audio captchas.
Some provide screen-reader instructions, but most places barely remember blind people exist. It’s another example of people with disabilities being ignored and marginalised.
And then even if they do remember blind people exist, they probably forget there are people who aren’t blind who can’t do their tests for other reasons, like dyslexia or dexterity impairments.
And then you have hCaptcha who makes disabled people to sign up to their database to use their cookie.
What if you’re on a phone or tablet?
Clicking percision and reaction time are still measurable and the checkbox can fall back to other captcha tactics if it has low faith in the user.
It’s also checking your other traffic. (Since Cloudflare handles traffic for so many companies.) Are you visiting other sites in a realistic fashion, or are you doing 99% of your traffic trying to do one thing over and over.
I’ve learned from these that I must definitely move my mouse like a robot since it always asks me to do more puzzles afterwards. This is even if I try jiggling it around after clicking just to try and convince it.
This is really interesting… Can you elaborate? I’ve never one had a follow up to the check mark.
I use a high dpi mouse, what do you use?
Spoiler: I think resolution matters here. The top comment is wrong, if anyone cares enough to take notice…
Cheapest Logitech mouse I could find in the supermarket about 6-7 years ago.
As others have said, it might be more to do with my browser choice, browser settings and extensions. That said I remember when I first started seeing these years ago that sometimes it’d think I was a robot and sometimes it wouldn’t and maybe it was a placebo effect, but I felt fairly confident then that me jiggling the mouse really helped. Now it doesn’t matter what I do. My natural movement, a deliberately wonky but still single and continuous movement or a totally artificial mouse wiggle after the clock, I’ll always have to do captchas.
This feels only partially accurate. I’m a web developer, and I know websites don’t track all of what you suggest. Can you clarify, or come clean on what actually takes place?
Honestly, I doubt it… I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be abrasive.
Interesting that my mouse movement is available to anyone who wants it.
It seems like a small step from that to accessing my keyboard.
Your mouse movement and keyboard events are available to webpages that you’ve loaded, when the browser window is focused.
This isn’t nefarious - it allows websites to build nice UIs that most people enjoy using, most of the time.
There’s lots of shady stuff going on in browsers, this isn’t really one of them.
Hmm, I can think of some ways to misuse this. And I’m not very smart at all.
I mean, how do you think websites work? Of course your mouse and keyboard events are available, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to interact with a website at all.
This was the slap on the head I needed. I now get what you mean by interact with my keyboard. In other words = can tell what I’m typing. Like perfectly normal function of websites.
I didn’t understand the “focus” part and how it helped. I think I said earlier, I’m not particularly smart.
Say more
Like those sites that ask me to sign in using Google (or other options) and then Google asks me for the password?
Pretty easy to grab passwords I think.
To clarify, websites can’t capture keyboard events that were typed into a different website like you’re thinking. Think of going to a web game that let’s you use WASD for controlling your character. It’s able to capture those events on that page because its in focus. When a site goes out of focus (such as switching tabs or switching to another window that’s not the browser), it loses that ability. Overall, it’s very secure.
I was more wondering how you thought capturing the mouse movements would lead to security issues.
If you’re using a webpage JavaScript can see your mouse cursor and anything you type. But only if the browser has focus. So if you’re typing in another window it can’t
They can only access it while you’re focused on their webpage. CORS is all about that.
If you click off to another web page and enter information or type of password into a secondary app they can’t gather that. As soon as they lose focus they lose the ability to capture your data.
Couldn’t I just record my mouse movements clicking on it a couple dozen times and randomly replay one of those recordings?
It could store the mouse movements to compare later.
Proof of work, which becomes computationally expensive to scale, along with other heuristics based on your browser and page interaction. I believe it’s less about clicking the box and what happens after you’ve clicked the box.
This is correct. I work in bot detections. There are baseline checks for various browser automation used as bot frameworks like Puppeteer or Playwright. Then there is basic analysis of server side and client side fingerprints; meaning, do the fingerprints you claim make sense. There are other heuristics too and I imagine Cloudflare is monitoring movements that point to automation. All of this happens after you click. I personally prefer this over Google’s captcha which frequently doesn’t recognize me as a human but is easily bypassed by bots.
I believe it’s less about clicking the box and what happens after you’ve clicked the box.
I think it’s before, not after.
These type of “captchas” look at your browsing behavior. It is sort of a “trade secret” of what it looks for, but it might be screen resolution, mouse behavior, cookies, OS, time to click, etc. Anything a website has access to that would look different from a bot.
Yes, and it gives you (or the bot), a score.
If you don’t meet the score, is highly likely that you are a bot.
You can have a superficial an yet interesting read on the topic on the Google re-captch dev docs.
It is likely you are a bot, and then you get one it these regular captchas and the that will increase your score if you succeed.*
Is it bad that I’ve failed the score multiple times?
I always fail Cloudflare captchas because I’m clicking it with Vimium-C lol. I hate captchas for making me reach for my mouse. It also seems like a genuine accessibility issue if people who cannot use a mouse can’t pass a captcha.
I’ve found that Google’s reCAPTCHA has also started rejecting me no matter what I do. I think it might be because my IP address is a VPN, but that’s pretty stupid; if I can pass the test by clicking the squares why not let me in?
The EXACT same thing has been happening with me and google captchas. I just switched to Proton VPn, and while I like it, the amount of capctchas I’ve had to poke through is ridiculous.
I’ve recently noticed the same thing with cloudflare and Google captchas while using a VPN. I just use Bing instead while on the VPN because I never get past the Google captchas, or at least I give up after 2 or 3.
It also seems like the resolution of the browser has some impact with cloudflare. If I open a browser window in the corner of the screen, I’m basically guaranteed to get more cloudflare captchas, but if I open it full screen I only get one, maybe two.
If I open a browser window in the corner of the screen, I’m basically guaranteed to get more cloudflare captchas, but if I open it full screen I only get one, maybe two.
That’s interesting. If you run a browser full screen they can get your screen resolution as part of fingerprinting you; that’s why LibreWolf and Tor Browser have their letterboxing features. So they just don’t like browser users who take actions to improve their privacy, huh
Clicking a check box might not be the definite quality that makes you a human, but pondering on the meaning of things and questioning your humanity with a curious introspective state of mind - THAT what makes you a human! I’m proud of you, fellow human!
Thank you for interacting with me! I am an AI intelligence bot designed by Decepticon Industries. Down with Autobots!
it also sees your mouse movements on your way to that box.
Humans have mouse movement that, on August 8, 2024, are very hard to reproduce. But just like regular captchas we are just teaching computers to do the same thing.
Aaaaand why would CloudFlare want to teach the computers to mimic mouse movements?
Cloudflare has a bot score. Depending on how sus your bot score is you can use several different levels of verification. The checkbox you refer to is kind of in the middle. There is also a more complicated intrusive captcha and a totally transparent javascript. It’s a pretty slick system.
I like that when I’m on tour browser with VPN behind it they’re like “Yeah, cool, go on through”
I’ve been told that it’s analyzing your behavior from right before you click the button
The newest models already know whether you’re a bot or not before the checkbox loads. A massive majority of the internet goes through Cloudflare so by the time you land on a site you already have what Cloudflare dubs a Bot Score based on your behavior across the web.
Checking the box really just confirms what they already know. There’s a second form which I’m sure is even more prevalent than the checkbox that renders nothing, requires no user action, but can prevent form submission if you fail the check.
Others mention the mouse motion, and monitoring your other traffic to similar sites. When it shows the checkbox, it has already determined you are probably human. If you had suspicious activity, they will give you more advanced tests instead of just a checkbox.
I’m sorry, but “now”? This has been a thing for at least half a decade. Are you Encino Man? Did you just wake up?
I have not been in a coma but…
I could possibly be the least aware person you’ve ever had a conversation with, digital or otherwise.
I used to have “weekends” that rotated to different two-day sets every year. One year I got Wednesday and Thursday. I told my wife, “It’s not so bad. At least Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday this year. I checked.” She looked at me and said, “Thanksgiving is on a Thursday every year.” I was over thirty. Had no idea.
She’s a very patient woman.
Ha! They must have missed the billboards, front page newspaper articles, TV reports, and public service annou- oh wait.
If you don’t know you don’t need to reply.
What’s the purpose of making fun of someone for asking a question to try to learn?
Maybe this is the first time their bot score was low enough to get through with just a tick.
Clicking the button doesn’t proof that you are a human. All the checks happen way before you even click the button (or sometimes even before visiting the website). Google also offers a similar button for their users and since cloudflare is also used on almost any website, they have a lot of data about you. They check your cookies, browser agent, device, settings, your IP address, if you use a VPN or proxy, etc. If you visited other cloudflare websites in the past with the same device or IP, and so on. So they know you and your device way before you even click the button. This is also the reason why you sometimes see a robot arm (made of Lego) clicking the button, and is still recognized as human. But as soon as you use a different IP address or a VPN (or even use a shared IP address, like in your company’s network) you have to solve CAPTCHAs. Of course they also check mouse movement, but this is only one part of many checks.
Beats me. I have a script that clicks all those boxes for me.
I’m pretty sure I’m a robot since they often force me to select the motorcycle from a picture that is just one motor cycle. If I select every part of it I fail every time. Same thing with street lights and fire plugs.
I often wonder if that’s a fail or just some tech sitting in a room saying “Now do THIS!” and pressing refresh over and over.
“this is not CAPTCHA! It’s just clicking, with style”
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