Am I The Only Person Who Despises reCAPTCHA?

[David Baxter PhD]

Am I The Only Person Who Despises reCAPTCHA?
by Donna Fontenot (DazzlinDonna)
Sept. 2, 2011

I’ve decided today that I’m going to boycott sites that use reCAPTCHA. I’m sick and tired of fighting with that thing. I can never, ever read those words. I spent 20 minutes just now trying to register with a site, and refreshed the recaptcha over 70 times! I even attempted to use the spoken version of it, and still couldn’t get it right! This happens to me all the freaking time. Every time I see a recaptcha I want to punch something – preferably the wall behind the webmaster who decided to make me jump through that hoop – or better yet, Google because they’ve owned it for the last couple of years.

I once complained on Twitter that I could never read the things, and one of my twitter followers suggested I was simply inept because I was unable to read them. So here are a few of the many recaptchas I failed to be able to read today while trying to register for a site.






You’ll notice in that last screenshot, I thought I’d figured out what that one said. I was wrong. That was the point at which I gave up. (Remember, even though I only show 9 screenshots here, I’d actually refreshed the thing over 70 times before I gave up!)

Seriously, the usability of this is so ridiculous that if you try to shove this down my throat, I’m going to just leave your site immediately. There are many anti-spam technologies you can choose from. Some are even worse than reCAPTCHA (though that’s very hard to do), but there are plenty that don’t make me want to throw my computer out the window. Use one of them instead. Please.

And one final note. This is aimed directly at Google. Google, you ride around on your shiny white horse telling webmasters to make their sites better for users, and you systematically punish those that you believe aren’t doing so. Panda, anyone? I wish I had the power you have, Google, because I’d pandalize your sites in a heartbeat just because you own this piece of crap. Get your own house in order, will you?



If you hate recaptcha as much as I do, join me in my boycott! Feel free to use the Boycott image I created above if you’d like. Help me put an end to this madness!

 

[Always Changing]

I think Donna is a mite angry with recaptcha.

 

[Daniel E.]

I would also point out that, at least in the past, what you type for the second word doesn't really matter. The second word is for assisting the optical character recognition technology for Google Books or some other Google project:

When users solve a CAPTCHA through reCAPTCHA, the software will give users two words: one with a known answer (the control word) and one where the OCR software wasn't quite sure what the word was. Once a certain number of users have solved the suspicious word with the same result, it becomes a control word itself and the OCR software can learn this word.

Google Acquires reCAPTCHA to Fight Spam and Improve Google Books OCR

So the first word is to see if you are human, and the second word is to help Google.

 

[Always Changing]

I think you do still have to type it (2nd word) correctly though, I have had similar experience when registering on some sites.. it is very frustrating!. I tend to give up after 3\4 efforts, then go and try to find another site with similar information or whatever.

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Always Changing]

I think you do still have to type it (2nd word) correctly though,

I can confirm that YES you do have to get both words correct!!!!!...