1y ago

I'm convinced Google uses its reCAPTCHA to promote Chrome

I use Firefox and Firefox Mobile on the desktop and Android respectively, Chromium with Bromite patches on Android, and infrequently Brave on the desktop to get to sites that only work properly with Chromium (more and more often - another whole separate can of worms too, this...) And I always pay attention to disable google.com and gstatic.com in NoScript and uBlock Origin whenever possible.

I noticed something quite striking: when I hit sites that use those hateful captchas from Google - aka "reCAPTCHA" that I know are from Google because they force me to temporarily reenable google.com and gstatic.com - statistically, Google quite consistently marks the captcha as passed with the green checkmark without even asking me to identify fire hydrants or bicycles once, or perhaps once but the test passes even if I purposedly don't select certain images, and almost never serves me those especially heinous "rolling captchas" that keep coming up with more and more images to identify or not as you click on them until it apparently has annoyed you enough and lets you through.

When I use Firefox however, the captchas never pass without at least one test, sometimes several in a row, and very often rolling captchas. And if I purposedly don't select certain images for the sake of experimentation, the captchas keep on coming and coming and coming forever - and if I keep doing it long enough, they plain never stop and the site become impossible to access.

Only with Firefox. Never with Chromium-based browsers.

I've been experimenting with this informally for months now and it's quite clear to me that Google has a dark pattern in place with its reCAPTCHA system to make Chrome and Chromium-based browsers the path of least resistance.

It's really disgusting...

73 comments

It's not necessary targeted like that. Remember Chrome sends a lot of information about the user, allowing them to more easily gauge if it's a bot. Firefox hides a lot of information, blocks a lot of third party scripts by default, and even sends fake information for some things. For all intents and purposes, Firefox looks much more like a bot than Chrome.
With that said, I use Firefox exclusively and don't have anywhere near as many issues as you seem to.
- Remember Chrome sends a lot of information about the user
  Remember, I use the equivalent of Bromite on Android and Brave on the desktop. Those are not Chrome: they're heavily privacy enhanced. By your theory, those browsers too should serve you more annoying reCAPTCHA more often, just like Firefox. But they don't: even on those privacy-respecting Chromium forks, you can get past reCAPTCHA much easier.
  I use Firefox exclusively and don’t have anywhere near as many issues as you seem to.
  Try using Chromium side by side and the subtle extra difficulties of sailing through the Googlespace become quite apparent. As long as you stick to Firefox, you don't realize that the Chromium experience is ever-so-slightly slicker on many websites.
  
  Brave is a chromium based browser, so maybe chromium sends out something that let's recaptcha know what's going on.
  
  I know google sites (especially Google search) are a much more polished experience on Chrome, but I haven't had an unusable experience on Firefox, I don't notice a problem.
  I think I missed that that isn't your point. You're saying google streamlines things for people on Chromium to make it a nicer experience, making it harder to switch away. And I think you're right about that.
  
  I wonder what happens if you spoof your user agent. It's probably a deeper issue, but might be worth a try.
- You're most likely logged into the browser with your Google account in Chrome. I'm sure they take that into account as well.

Keep in mind that basic bots don't render or process certain page elements - like javascript. So VPN plus noScript/uBlock plus obscured data plus no preexisting cookies and possibly unique fingerprint from all your previous interactions (depending on your privacy settings)... It all adds to possible bot behavior. In my mind, getting caprcha'd is a good thing. It may mean google has low confidence that it knows who I am.
- In my mind, getting caprcha’d is a good thing. It may mean google has low confidence that it knows who I am.
  That is possibly the most unique outlook I've read about today.
  There's nothing good about captchas: it's an insult to human intelligence, it's forced unpair labor and each time I get one, I want to murder someone.
  In a normal world, your statement would be utterly insane. But in our dystopian surveillance economy society, it's actually a rational and interesting point of view, and one that turns captchas into a useful indicator of how well you manage to evade said corporate surveillance.
  Interesting. Thank you for that.
  However, If you're right and Googles serves fewer captchas to those they can track better and not just those who run Chromium as I suspect, it also means privacy-enhanced Chromium-based browsers don't hold a candle to Firefox. That's not great news considering Chromium is the new de-factor standard and some websites only work okay in Chromium.
  
  You've never operated a public-facing website, have you?
  In the past 24 hours alone, I've had at least 344 bot attempts on my personal site. A handful are harmless crawlers but most are hoping to hit a vulnerability.
  Captchas are necessary to prevent malicious bot activity. It's unfortunate that it also means it'll be a pain for users.

You may have turned on a setting in Firefox that is meant to obscure your browser fingerprint. For me, it seems to force more captchas for me.
I kept the feature on though, because when I signed into Google and got the notification of a new sign-in on my phone, it thought my OS was Windows NT (it's Linux) so it seems to at least kind of work.
I forget what the setting was off the top of my head (in about.config I think), but could look into it if anyone is curious.
Edit: went and found info on it. It is not just "Enhanced Tracking Protection." It is specifically about blocking your browser fingerprint: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting
- It's probably enhanced tracking protection you're talking about. I keep it on as well but damn those captchas are annoying. I'd prefer to go back to the unreadable distorted text over the endless AI training ones.
  
  Nope, this is something else: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting
  
  Select the picture with a keyboard (all pictures have weird AI shit that is absolutely not a keyboard) captcha failed
- Rfp, arkenfox, Mull, torbrowser, Librewolf

I just use captcha buster extension in Firefox, captchas are just stupid and it makes more problems for humans than for robots.
- especially the newer ones that look like trying to see nipples on scrambled cable in the 90s.
  My eyes are already shit that I can barely make out the normal images, how the fuck do you expect me to make out this god damn LSD fever dream shit?
- Damn thats a thing? Nice!
- Tell that to anyone running a website with a pubic facing form - including register and login forms.

My experience was that when solving captchas where you select pics on the grid and other pics load and replace the selected ones within the same round. in firefox it tends to play those fade-in fade-out very slowly. while on chrome they appear instantly.
Unfortunatly I can't expand my obveservation just based on my own anecdotal experience. have you noticed the same behaviour ?
- Can absolutely confirm this
- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

I don't think it's browser specific or a direct targeting of Firefox; that's likely confirmation bias. I see rolling captchas and the annoying ones that have a delayed fading in and out even on Chromium forks. I think the biggest reason for seeing them is VPN usage. When I turn off my VPN, I either don't see any captchas or it just automatically shows the green check when I start them.

The thing that annoys me so much is why every damn website has to depend on gOoGle scripts to function. E.g : most of website depend on googleapis or ajax.googleapis. why don't you just stop hotlinking everything to 3rd party shits. This is basically spread Google's domination on web. Remember, those 3rd party libraries are not Free. They take visitors data and make you dependent on their services. So Google has become the gatekeeper of many websites.
I have a website and I coded everything by hands. No 3rd party JavaScript and other 3rd party BS. It makes my website run so damn fast
- What you’re referring to is in fact Google Analytics which allows a lot of app to collect intrusive insights on their customers.
  If you want to create an app today, you will use JS, Lemmy uses it, everyone uses it. It’s not dominated by Google, it’s just the standard for building web app today!
  
  I am not against JavaScript. I sometimes use JavaScript and I don't see the wrongs in that. What I am concerned is why so many websites use 3rd party JavaScript. This is disgusting because you sell your visitors out. Besides you can't control the content of 3rd party scripts and most of them sell your data and spy on you.

Google's ReCaptcha in version 3 works in the background. Instead of displaying images of crosswalks and such, it uses a kind of risk score. This risk score is based on user behavior: If someone has behaved like a human in the past and thus gets a low risk score, the captcha is passed without you having to do anything or even seeing it.
I assume that Google uses data from it's own services, web analytics applications and usage data from Andoird devices and Chrome for this. Of course, this is not without its privacy issues but it's convenient.
- So, if I want to access a website, google has to collect a record about me, and only if the fucking company approve my past behavior I can access the site. Of course if I don't have any past records I can't (easily?) access the website. Simply awesome.
  
  Yes, pretty much. But unlike Cloudflare DDos Protection and such Google ReCaptcha is mainly used to secure forms of all kinds (e. g. signup, login, contact or frontend posting forms).
- Google’s ReCaptcha in version 3 works in the background. Instead of displaying images of crosswalks and such, it uses a kind of risk score.
  This doesn't factor in in my case: I only enable Google scripts to pass the reCAPTCHA. They are not enabled before or after, either on Firefox or Chromium. So in theory, regardless of the browser, Google should have no way ot tracking my behavior in the background - or if they do, the amount of tracking should be identical.
  
  Chrome probably still collects some usage data.

Do you use a VPN by chance? I get really annoying CAPTCHAs with my VPN on.
Google doesn't like things that make the user less identifiable, so they strike back however they can without it being too obvious.
- I have to do a captcha on basically every cloudflare site with my VPN on.
- No VPN. I hit those websites from work or from my work cellphone.
  Google doesn’t like things that make the user less identifiable, so they strike back however they can without it being too obvious.
  I reckon so too.
  And also, I believe they coax people into adopting Chrome or Chromium-based browsers by making alternatives harder or more annoying to use, so that the browser landscape eventually becomes a monoculture they can control. Once Gecko-based browsers are finally extinct, they'll go after the Chromium forks.

That's weird, I use Waterfox and I occasionally get to do some kind of "puzzle", but other times I just need to click the reCaptcha and it will confirm itself (with the green check)
Ironically, when I use Vivaldi, the captcha doesn't even load, and when it loads, it says it's wrong regardless of the answer I give it, so I'm always locked and that's quite literally the only reason I stopped using Vivaldi.
On Edge I need to fill in puzzles ALL THE TIME, that's also why I stopped using Edge (apart from the bloatware and the uBlock not working there)

I deal with that BS all the time, although I don't have the issue when I don't use a VPN

Jeez, just faced the forever recaptcha a couple of days back. I used Firefox web and the recaptcha was a sold 5+ kinds (select cars, buses, motorcycle, signals...). I kinda half thought that it was some sort of gag after seeing it go on for what seemed like forever. Thankfully I made it through and it will not change my decision to stick with Firefox.

I never see them because I do not use google services for anything. However, I am willing to bet they are a way to justify their fingerprinting data used to identify people.
https://news.gatech.edu/news/2014/04/07/personal-touch-signature-makes-mobile-devices-more-secure
- I never see them because I do not use google services for anything.
  You don't have to use Google services to get served Google captchas. The sites you want to visit do it for you and foist them on you.
  The reason why you don't see reCAPTCHAs is because you don't have to visit sites that use reCAPTCHAs.
  
  There are open source embedded CAPTCHAs. Lemmy has one in the github repo, or linked to one in an issue post IIRC. All of my devices are either on a whitelist firewall, or have google blacklisted. I haven't even had a prompt for a CAPATCHA in years. It is like sites with cookies or popups, I consider these things to indicate broken websites and leave immediately. If I care for the content I'll find an archived version of the site elsewhere. I set my own expectations, and don't care how that relates to anyone else's.

Side note - Firefox for Android recently freezes and crashes when you use the Google search in the private view. Also seems intentional
- Private mode is useless, change my mind

I read that the "level of annoyance" (phrasing mine) has to do with your score (i.e. how likely Google thinks you are a bot). And I wouldn't be surprised if using any browser other than ones in their ecosystem reduces your score more.
Anyway, there are other captcha systems websites could use but choose not to.
- there are other captcha systems websites could use but choose not to.
  You hit the nail on the head: Google has made itself the de-facto default for many web services, so that it takes extra effort to go with a privacy-friendly alternative. That's what makes Google so dangerous: it's their customers who make them unavoidable, be it for reCAPTCHA, fonts, basic Javascript, login, analytics, maps... the list is endless.

Wish we had some extension which could skip these CAPTCHA shits. I normally surf on mull (forked Firefox) though sometime have to use cromite (fork of bromite which is a fork of chromium) to access websites peacefully.

Re: rolling captchas, I've noticed that when I select one wrong image in addition to or excluing one of their right images, I don't get rolling captchas. Maybe it a fluke, but its happened times that its become regular practice.
- You just have to select exactly three correct images. When there are 4 correct images you only have to select 3
  
  I know. my point is I have been able to avoid rolling captchas by selecting one incorrect image & 2 correct ones. I have no idea if that's a glitch a fluke or something else.
  It works for me, I haven't dealt with a single rolling captcha since March'23.

Oh, you said your blocking google.com and gstatic.com? Try privacy badger, Google uses a million other domains to track as well (Google Fonts for example) and privacy badger will let you find and block those kinds from domains from tracking or at least from leaving cookies if they are required for the site to work.

73 comments