Is CAPTCHA and re-CAPTCHA going away?
March 4, 2018 12:14 PM Subscribe
A website building program I use sent me a note last week saying they would be shutting down the portion of their services that incorporates CAPTCHA as a smart tool because Google was moving away from the verification system. But I haven't found anything in the news about it.
As a researcher, I know hundreds of sites won't move forward with any requests without meeting CAPTCHA requirements. If this is true, how will this affect searches and what will website operators do to prevent being spammed, which is what CAPTCHA was designed to prevent? Also, I'd read that other researchers use it to help translate and decipher hard to read text. What will happen to that work?
As a researcher, I know hundreds of sites won't move forward with any requests without meeting CAPTCHA requirements. If this is true, how will this affect searches and what will website operators do to prevent being spammed, which is what CAPTCHA was designed to prevent? Also, I'd read that other researchers use it to help translate and decipher hard to read text. What will happen to that work?
I believe Google is phasing out version 1 of recaptcha. They may not be interested in updating to the latest version.
posted by backwards guitar at 1:41 PM on March 4, 2018
posted by backwards guitar at 1:41 PM on March 4, 2018
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It sounds like the service you're using has built everything on v1, and for some reason is choosing not to migrate to v2 or the newest "invisible" version.
Google has been sending out notification emails to site owners, but I bet that for a good amount of sites those emails haven't been received, read, or understood. Any site which uses reCAPTCHA v1 after March 31st will have their forms stop working until they upgrade to a newer version, replace it with a different system, or turn it off. If you have any site(s) you visit which still is using the "stop spam read books" reCAPTCHA, you could send them a message to warn them of the shutdown. Here's some (slightly technical) information from Google.
I don't know what's happening to the book-parsing data, but it seems clear Google is more interested in parsing their streetview data these days. The newer version often asks you to pick out vehicles or street signs out of pictures.
As a side note, Google isn't the only service which provides CAPTCHA systems. There are others out there as well, and many sites have something which works locally (you may have seen forms which ask you to add up two numbers, or something along those lines). All those will keep working as they aren't dependent on Google's system.
posted by bjrn at 12:48 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]