ReCaptcha removes retyping characters for most users

Websites that use Google’s reCaptcha service to serve captchas to new users will soon be able to choose to use a variant of the captcha that, in most cases, does not require typing any code.

Instead, users must click a button that indicates they are not a robot. It is then determined, among other things, on the basis of the interaction with the button whether the user is indeed a human being of flesh and blood and not an automated script, writes Google, which bought reCaptcha in 2009. The IP address is also taken into account. If the risk analysis cannot reliably predict whether it is indeed a human being, then in some cases a user can still be forced to prove his humanity.

According to Google, the new captchas are more resistant to bots than the existing ones, which the company says can be guessed by bots in many cases. ReCaptcha was introduced as a captcha service that was also used to digitize books. To this end, passages from books were used as captcha.

When users have to prove they’re not a bot, they don’t always have to type in a code anymore: Google is experimenting with other ways to make that possible, for example by clicking all the images with a cat in a collection of nine images. This should especially make it easier to use captchas on mobile devices.

Website administrators must choose to implement the new captchas themselves. Internet users may have come across the new captchas in practice: WordPress and the Humble Bundle have already served them to a large portion of their visitors over the past week.