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I'm convinced Google uses its reCAPTCHA to promote Chrome (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I use Firefox and Firefox Mobile on the desktop and Android respectively, Chromium with Bromite patches on Android, and infrequently Brave on the desktop to get to sites that only work properly with Chromium (more and more often - another whole separate can of worms too, this...) And I always pay attention to disable google.com and gstatic.com in NoScript and uBlock Origin whenever possible.

I noticed something quite striking: when I hit sites that use those hateful captchas from Google - aka "reCAPTCHA" that I know are from Google because they force me to temporarily reenable google.com and gstatic.com - statistically, Google quite consistently marks the captcha as passed with the green checkmark without even asking me to identify fire hydrants or bicycles once, or perhaps once but the test passes even if I purposedly don't select certain images, and almost never serves me those especially heinous "rolling captchas" that keep coming up with more and more images to identify or not as you click on them until it apparently has annoyed you enough and lets you through.

When I use Firefox however, the captchas never pass without at least one test, sometimes several in a row, and very often rolling captchas. And if I purposedly don't select certain images for the sake of experimentation, the captchas keep on coming and coming and coming forever - and if I keep doing it long enough, they plain never stop and the site become impossible to access.

Only with Firefox. Never with Chromium-based browsers.

I've been experimenting with this informally for months now and it's quite clear to me that Google has a dark pattern in place with its reCAPTCHA system to make Chrome and Chromium-based browsers the path of least resistance.

It's really disgusting...

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's not necessary targeted like that. Remember Chrome sends a lot of information about the user, allowing them to more easily gauge if it's a bot. Firefox hides a lot of information, blocks a lot of third party scripts by default, and even sends fake information for some things. For all intents and purposes, Firefox looks much more like a bot than Chrome.

With that said, I use Firefox exclusively and don't have anywhere near as many issues as you seem to.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Remember Chrome sends a lot of information about the user

Remember, I use the equivalent of Bromite on Android and Brave on the desktop. Those are not Chrome: they're heavily privacy enhanced. By your theory, those browsers too should serve you more annoying reCAPTCHA more often, just like Firefox. But they don't: even on those privacy-respecting Chromium forks, you can get past reCAPTCHA much easier.

I use Firefox exclusively and don’t have anywhere near as many issues as you seem to.

Try using Chromium side by side and the subtle extra difficulties of sailing through the Googlespace become quite apparent. As long as you stick to Firefox, you don't realize that the Chromium experience is ever-so-slightly slicker on many websites.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Brave is a chromium based browser, so maybe chromium sends out something that let's recaptcha know what's going on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

maybe chromium sends out something that let’s recaptcha know what’s going on.

Maybe. But in that case, that's not a great sign that Brave respects your privacy. But I wouldn't put it past Brave: they too are a for-profit and I don't quite trust them either.

However, the Bromite fork I run on my deGoogled phone almost certainly doesn't make any privacy compromises and it solves reCAPTCHAs more easily than Firefox Mobile.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Any Web browser that claims privacy and security while using chromium as its base isn't worth the risk, they may have implemented fixes and added their own proprietary code, but it's still chromium and Google most likely hides a bunch of stuff from devs so they can't mess with it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

it’s still chromium and Google most likely hides a bunch of stuff from devs so they can’t mess with it.

Chromium is open source.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It's still made by Google, tho, so can you really trust that there's no hidden shit? This is a company that is trying to create a monopoly over website access.

[–] Rose 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have you reviewed each line of the code and do you make sure to review each commit before updating?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No but some people do. And even if Google could get away with hiding spyware in open source code for a while - even for a long while, the moment they got found out doing that, it would hurt their reputation so badly it would never fully recover from it. Not that their reputation is great right now, but I'm pretty sure that's a line even they won't cross.

[–] Rose 3 points 1 year ago

Would it? Because it happened.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know google sites (especially Google search) are a much more polished experience on Chrome, but I haven't had an unusable experience on Firefox, I don't notice a problem.

I think I missed that that isn't your point. You're saying google streamlines things for people on Chromium to make it a nicer experience, making it harder to switch away. And I think you're right about that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

but I haven’t had an unusable experience on Firefox, I don’t notice a problem.

There are quite a few online web stores I patronize in which the shopping cart is broken, or the checkout is broken and there's no way of paying in Firefox.

My bank's online banking site is broken too in Firefox. It's okay to pay for things and display basic checking account information, but more detailed personal finance pages are unusable.

My company's ERP is half broken in Firefox.

And quite a few porn sites I download stuff off of are broken too in Firefox.

And that's with NoScript, uBlock Origin and Ghostery fully disabled.

Obviously all those sites are streamlined to work well with Chromium or Chromium-based browser because - surprise surprise - it's the most common browser type, which is exactly the position Google wanted to place itself in. It's was very same problem when websites were designed to work primarily with Explorer, when Microsoft dominated the browser space many years ago.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is not my experience. For the sites I frequent, though Firefox is generally not listed as a supported browser anymore, the sites work fine. That includes banking and any random shopping cart site. That's probably because in my country there are common payment portals, and for you the common payment portals are probably different.

One site I have trouble with is one for health insurance, but a user agent spoofed to look like Chrome makes the site work fine (I hate so much that they do this, and have complained but I'm just one customer).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

You're most likely logged into the browser with your Google account in Chrome. I'm sure they take that into account as well.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You may have turned on a setting in Firefox that is meant to obscure your browser fingerprint. For me, it seems to force more captchas for me.

I kept the feature on though, because when I signed into Google and got the notification of a new sign-in on my phone, it thought my OS was Windows NT (it's Linux) so it seems to at least kind of work.

I forget what the setting was off the top of my head (in about.config I think), but could look into it if anyone is curious.

Edit: went and found info on it. It is not just "Enhanced Tracking Protection." It is specifically about blocking your browser fingerprint: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's probably enhanced tracking protection you're talking about. I keep it on as well but damn those captchas are annoying. I'd prefer to go back to the unreadable distorted text over the endless AI training ones.

[–] arin 2 points 1 year ago

Select the picture with a keyboard (all pictures have weird AI shit that is absolutely not a keyboard) captcha failed

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh interesting! I don't have that enabled but will be turning it on

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Keep in mind that basic bots don't render or process certain page elements - like javascript. So VPN plus noScript/uBlock plus obscured data plus no preexisting cookies and possibly unique fingerprint from all your previous interactions (depending on your privacy settings)... It all adds to possible bot behavior. In my mind, getting caprcha'd is a good thing. It may mean google has low confidence that it knows who I am.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In my mind, getting caprcha’d is a good thing. It may mean google has low confidence that it knows who I am.

That is possibly the most unique outlook I've read about today.

There's nothing good about captchas: it's an insult to human intelligence, it's forced unpair labor and each time I get one, I want to murder someone.

In a normal world, your statement would be utterly insane. But in our dystopian surveillance economy society, it's actually a rational and interesting point of view, and one that turns captchas into a useful indicator of how well you manage to evade said corporate surveillance.

Interesting. Thank you for that.

However, If you're right and Googles serves fewer captchas to those they can track better and not just those who run Chromium as I suspect, it also means privacy-enhanced Chromium-based browsers don't hold a candle to Firefox. That's not great news considering Chromium is the new de-factor standard and some websites only work okay in Chromium.

[–] droans 8 points 1 year ago

You've never operated a public-facing website, have you?

In the past 24 hours alone, I've had at least 344 bot attempts on my personal site. A handful are harmless crawlers but most are hoping to hit a vulnerability.

Captchas are necessary to prevent malicious bot activity. It's unfortunate that it also means it'll be a pain for users.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I just use captcha buster extension in Firefox, captchas are just stupid and it makes more problems for humans than for robots.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

especially the newer ones that look like trying to see nipples on scrambled cable in the 90s.

My eyes are already shit that I can barely make out the normal images, how the fuck do you expect me to make out this god damn LSD fever dream shit?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Tell that to anyone running a website with a pubic facing form - including register and login forms.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My experience was that when solving captchas where you select pics on the grid and other pics load and replace the selected ones within the same round. in firefox it tends to play those fade-in fade-out very slowly. while on chrome they appear instantly.

Unfortunatly I can't expand my obveservation just based on my own anecdotal experience. have you noticed the same behaviour ?

[–] vikingtons 10 points 1 year ago

Can absolutely confirm this

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[–] maroudava 14 points 1 year ago

I don't think it's browser specific or a direct targeting of Firefox; that's likely confirmation bias. I see rolling captchas and the annoying ones that have a delayed fading in and out even on Chromium forks. I think the biggest reason for seeing them is VPN usage. When I turn off my VPN, I either don't see any captchas or it just automatically shows the green check when I start them.

[–] DandomRude 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Google's ReCaptcha in version 3 works in the background. Instead of displaying images of crosswalks and such, it uses a kind of risk score. This risk score is based on user behavior: If someone has behaved like a human in the past and thus gets a low risk score, the captcha is passed without you having to do anything or even seeing it.

I assume that Google uses data from it's own services, web analytics applications and usage data from Andoird devices and Chrome for this. Of course, this is not without its privacy issues but it's convenient.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, if I want to access a website, google has to collect a record about me, and only if the fucking company approve my past behavior I can access the site. Of course if I don't have any past records I can't (easily?) access the website. Simply awesome.

[–] DandomRude 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, pretty much. But unlike Cloudflare DDos Protection and such Google ReCaptcha is mainly used to secure forms of all kinds (e. g. signup, login, contact or frontend posting forms).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google’s ReCaptcha in version 3 works in the background. Instead of displaying images of crosswalks and such, it uses a kind of risk score.

This doesn't factor in in my case: I only enable Google scripts to pass the reCAPTCHA. They are not enabled before or after, either on Firefox or Chromium. So in theory, regardless of the browser, Google should have no way ot tracking my behavior in the background - or if they do, the amount of tracking should be identical.

[–] DandomRude 6 points 1 year ago

Chrome probably still collects some usage data.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you use a VPN by chance? I get really annoying CAPTCHAs with my VPN on.

Google doesn't like things that make the user less identifiable, so they strike back however they can without it being too obvious.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have to do a captcha on basically every cloudflare site with my VPN on.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That's weird, I use Waterfox and I occasionally get to do some kind of "puzzle", but other times I just need to click the reCaptcha and it will confirm itself (with the green check)

Ironically, when I use Vivaldi, the captcha doesn't even load, and when it loads, it says it's wrong regardless of the answer I give it, so I'm always locked and that's quite literally the only reason I stopped using Vivaldi.

On Edge I need to fill in puzzles ALL THE TIME, that's also why I stopped using Edge (apart from the bloatware and the uBlock not working there)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Jeez, just faced the forever recaptcha a couple of days back. I used Firefox web and the recaptcha was a sold 5+ kinds (select cars, buses, motorcycle, signals...). I kinda half thought that it was some sort of gag after seeing it go on for what seemed like forever. Thankfully I made it through and it will not change my decision to stick with Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Side note - Firefox for Android recently freezes and crashes when you use the Google search in the private view. Also seems intentional

[–] j4k3 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never see them because I do not use google services for anything. However, I am willing to bet they are a way to justify their fingerprinting data used to identify people.

https://news.gatech.edu/news/2014/04/07/personal-touch-signature-makes-mobile-devices-more-secure

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I never see them because I do not use google services for anything.

You don't have to use Google services to get served Google captchas. The sites you want to visit do it for you and foist them on you.

The reason why you don't see reCAPTCHAs is because you don't have to visit sites that use reCAPTCHAs.

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