Google/reCAPTCHA: now cracked
Our competitors’ CAPTCHAs, of which reCAPTCHA is probably the best known, are all static. That is, in comparison to our own animated CAPTCHAs, the codes you see do not move. And therein lies their weakness.
Bots use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to defeat CAPTCHAs. Our competitors fight this by distorting their CAPTCHAs, making it harder for you and I to read. And as bots evolve, our competitors have no choice but to distort their CAPTCHAs even further.
reCAPTCHA is no different — ever try to read their CAPTCHA while trying to buy a time-limited commodity (e.g. concert tickets)? Grrrr…don’t get me started!
It’s simply an unsustainable approach to CAPTCHAs.
But here’s what’s even more interesting: the opposite is also true. Google/reCAPTCHA just made changes so that their CAPTCHAs are easier to read (great for end users), but in doing so they instantly become less effective (bad for publishers and site admins).
To wit: as stated in an article entitled New Google CAPTCHAs Now Cracked, “Users now find the words easier to read – but so do machines.” In fact, security expert Jonathon Wilkins was able to increase the effectiveness of OCR on these easier-to-read CAPTCHAs by a full order of magnitude. Yikes.
Take a look at our animated CAPTCHAs: our approach does not sacrifice effectiveness for readability (and vice versa). And heck, with our AdEmbed service, we’ll even pay you to use it!