Google’s new reCAPTCHA experience

If you've ever had to try and decipher the annoying fuzzy, distorted words when you want to leave a comment on a website, buy tickets for a concert or register on a social media site, never fear because the days of Google CAPTCHA are gone.

So Google reCAPTCHA is the solution, and you’re probably shedding tears of joy right now! Those forms that make you prove you are human by typing in words that you can barely make out will soon be replaced with a single click.

The software engineers working on the updated version have explained that the new program will identify you purely by letting you tick a box, so forget about spending hours filling in a long online form and then having your submission rejected because the words at the bottom can barely be read.

But how does it work? For the users that’s behavior is easy enough to screen, simply ticking the checkbox is enough. However, if you’re not so easy to identify you will be asked to go through a more complicated test. The tests might be the good old text decoding steps, or something a little better like the mobile test which will present you with a picture of a cat and then ask you to pick a similar picture.

For the time being websites do have the option to keep the old CAPTCHA method or move on to the new and improved reCAPTCHA, but for us as the users the switch can’t come fast enough! So chances are most of the websites will want to switch over pretty soon.

Why is Google making this switch though? Well, it turns out that the old CAPTCHAs aren't actually that good at keeping robots out anyway! Today’s technology means that bots can easily solve CAPTCHs with almost 100% accuracy!

That means that CAPTCHs are pretty useless at protecting websites from spam and abuse, luckily the new API (Application Programming Interface) will provide new types of challenges to test you that are easier for us humans to use, especially on mobile devices.

Google’s main goal here was to change from confirming if you aren't a robot to directly asking whether or not you are a robot, so they did! By simplifying the reCAPTCHA experience and they’re calling it “No Captcha reCaptcha”.

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Written By: Christine Romans
Copy Writer at The Computer Guyz Cape Town