Why am I suddenly getting captcha pics on subscription websites?
April 16, 2022 6:09 PM   Subscribe

I subscribe to the Atlantic and the Washington Post inter alia. A couple of weeks ago the Atlantic started serving me up captcha pictures when I try to log on. Today, the Washington Post started doing that too. I use Chrome, but I don't think it's a browser issue because I get the same with Opera. I still get it after clearing my cache. What's going on? Why such a weird layer of additional sludge clogging up access to websites I pay good money to view?
posted by mono blanco to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)
 
Are you using a VPN? If so, turn it off.
posted by pullayup at 6:46 PM on April 16, 2022


If you're using a Mac, it's possible that iCloud Private Relay is making you look sus to some websites. See that link for how to turn it off completely or to make more granular adjustments.

Edit: My mistake -- I missed the fact that the problem is happening in Chrome. Wouldn't be iCloud Private Relay in that case.
posted by theory at 7:37 PM on April 16, 2022


I've noticed the same thing! Any chance you're running adblocking plugins or something like pihole? The prior comments are making me wondering if my industrial strength adblocking is why...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:16 PM on April 16, 2022


I sometimes get this when I am tab queueing and/or sending things to Pocket. The sites register it as potential bot activity because of too many requests in rapid succession.
posted by srboisvert at 4:24 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I starting getting Capcha'd recently as well on both sites using Safari on Mac. So annoying.
posted by Elsie at 5:26 AM on April 17, 2022


Response by poster: No VPN. Running Windows 10. Xfinity internet provider. Using AdBlock. Using Google password autofill. But hmm...didn't happen today. I wonder if it comes and goes depending upon what IP address Xfinity's sending out on my behalf?
posted by mono blanco at 6:31 AM on April 17, 2022


My subscriptions to the Wash Post and Atlantic are working okay. No captchas. Win 10, adblock plus, Firefox.

(I occasionally, rarely, see the captchas on otherwise okay sites if I open a bunch of tabs for different articles, all at once. Has to be a big pile of links!)
posted by jjj606 at 10:24 AM on April 17, 2022


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