# reCaptcha is the Worst **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 15, 2012, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598 "2012-08-15T20:05:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/41 "2012-08-16T15:21:52Z")
Are they really supposed to be words? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/42 "2012-08-16T15:33:26Z")
I was trying to make a purchase recently. The order form was poorly designed, making it a pain to fill out. Messed up the captcha thing and had to start from scratch. When there was a problem with my second attempt I decided that I didn’t need to purchase the item after all. Later that day I got an email from the company asking why I didn’t complete my purchase! I replied, explaining why. They offered to do the sale via email, I chose not to bother. ---
**Author:** ![MrSquishy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9e5f3/32.png) [@MrSquishy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrSquishy)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/43 "2012-08-16T18:13:49Z")
I’m not 100% sure how reCaptcha works, but your rage might be misdirected. We set up a captcha for one of our sites and by default it used whatever fonts were installed on the web server to generate the captcha. We had to restrict which fonts the captcha generator used so it couldn’t use Wingdings etc. If reCaptcha works the same way, it might be the site administrator who is at fault, not reCaptcha. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/44 "2012-08-16T18:41:50Z")
reCaptcha does not work the same way. It uses images scanned from deadtree sources as a means of crowdsourcing the digitization of books and other crap. It’s a cool idea that just didn’t pan out. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/45 "2012-08-16T19:18:29Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > It’s a cool idea that just didn’t pan out. Why would you say that? Seems to work reasonably well to me. I’ve never had a problem with reCaptcha, while I have banged my head on others. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/46 "2012-08-16T19:44:21Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Why would you say that? Seems to work reasonably well to me. I’ve never had a problem with reCaptcha, while I have banged my head on others. Off the top of my head, he might say that because: > [@Gangster\_Octopus](#): > > Yes, [url-“[http://www.google.com/recaptcha](http://www.google.com/recaptcha)”]reCaptcha is the worst. It is worse than Britta! I understand the need for security and bot protection, but there has to be something anything better than this illegible piece of garbage. Christ, I have to refresh 10-15 times or more just to find something I think I can read and I usually do it with my fingers crossed because I am guessing on a couple of the symbols. Hmm is that a capital s, no wait is that is a …w, an n, the number 3? What the fuck, is that? It looks like a monkey playing a Wii. It might help if maybe they were actual words. > > So fuck you reCaptcha and double Fuck you to those sites that use it. > [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > _Þø33¶@\_\_^ÆsØs__moid_\*\* > > Please type what you see in this window before I reply to your post. > [@nogravity](#): > > I agree, recaptcha sucks more than anything. There’s quite a few alternatives out there so I don’t know why places insist on using it. Worse, if you’re on a phone. Also, you’re basically working for Google by translating OCR text into digital. > [@3\_20\_59\_or\_bust](#): > > Lately, their trick that’s been pissing me right off is cutting off the top or bottom half of a word. > > Christ! The whole word ends up looking like “ooooooo”. How am I supposed to know if that’s a “p” or a “q” or a “d” or a “b” or a… > [@LavenderBlue](#): > > You really need a special pair of glasses to read a lot of them. Or a new pair of eyes. Amen to the OP! > [@Morgenstern](#): > > No kidding. They put the bottom 10% of one word and the top 10% of the other word. And they want you to guess it. I do my best to avoid sites that use it. > [@Morgenstern](#): > > That’s what they say, as well as the words are all words from old texts, but I’ve seen many that could not possibly have been words in any language. > [@Sattua](#): > > I recently encountered it for the first time, and kept getting ones in which one word was literally a black rectangle. WTF? > [@DrDeth](#): > > And, they ask you to type the word- and it’s not a WORD. It’s nonsense. They also mix in zeros and O’s in there, which are impossible to tell apart with widely differing fonts. > [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > Argggh. I had to fill out a form, on one of my suppliers websites, that took about 10 minutes and a lot of cutting and pasting. At the bottom was a reCAPTCHA. It was stupidly difficult and I got it wrong. Which lead to the whole page being wiped clean, and another 10 minutes of cutting and pasting. Bad page design PLUS reCAPTCHA. > [@friedo](#): > > One time my reCaptcha challenge was a blurry double integral. Sadly, the input box does not accept TeX. > > reCaptcha is a cool idea, but it is an utter failure of an experiment. Unfortunately, they made it really easy to use (for programmers), and now every website in existence seems to have one of those fucking things on its forms. I generally have to try six or more times to get something remotely legible. ---
**Author:** ![mozchron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mozchron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mozchron)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/47 "2012-08-16T19:58:41Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > This sounds like bullshit to me. Why? the reCAPTCHA algorithm and platform was developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon and described in the Journal _Science_, one of the most prestigious scientific journals ([article here, don’t know if its free to the public but the abstract is](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5895/1465.long)). You may find them annoying, but the idea is sound, and that description is a good outline of how it works. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/48 "2012-08-16T20:06:57Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > Off the top of my head, he might say that because: Well yeah, it’s not perfect. So you hit refresh a couple times until you get something you can type. It’s not as if reCaptcha _only_ gives you the lower half of an integration formula every single time. It’s just occasional quirks that apparently some folks can’t cope with. ---
**Author:** ![Rubixcube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Rubixcube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubixcube)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/49 "2012-08-16T20:10:03Z")
I just did about 2 dozen reCAPTCHAS on the website and I’m starting to see some of the problems mentioned in the thread. I’ve gotten a few words that were partially cut off, I’ve gotten a few words that are obscured or partially blacked out. But despite all that I didn’t skip one, and not a single entry was refused. One of the worst I saw was one where only the very top of the word was visible, I could see two dots from what I presume were i’s and a few black marks from the tops of the other letters that were unreadable. I entered the very closest I was able (i i s) and they accepted it. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/50 "2012-08-16T20:11:09Z")
I’m not sure if some of the complaints are really about reCaptcha but just the regular captcha. I know I definitely prefer reCaptcha to the ones that are just a mix of floating and stretched letters and numbers on funky backgrounds. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/51 "2012-08-16T20:13:14Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Well yeah, it’s not perfect. So you hit refresh a couple times until you get something you can type. It’s not as if reCaptcha _only_ gives you the lower half of an integration formula every single time. It’s just occasional quirks that apparently some folks can’t cope with. I feel like I’m seeing the messed-up ones a lot more frequently lately. I don’t know if they’re cycling to the end of the easily-legible stuff and going into the trickier OCR or whether I’m just imagining it, but I swear I never used to get mathematical symbols or illegible foreign words, and now it seems like I get something like that every other time. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/52 "2012-08-16T20:15:54Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I’m not sure if some of the complaints are really about reCaptcha but just the regular captcha. I know I definitely prefer reCaptcha to the ones that are just a mix of floating and stretched letters and numbers on funky backgrounds. There are two of them? Captcha and reCaptcha aren’t the same thing? EDIT, Looked, it’s reCaptcha I dislike. I guess I’ve never seen Captcha then. ---
**Author:** ![Rubixcube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Rubixcube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubixcube)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/53 "2012-08-16T20:32:03Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > There are two of them? Captcha and reCaptcha aren’t the same thing? > > EDIT, > > Looked, it’s reCaptcha I dislike. I guess I’ve never seen Captcha then. Where did you go for the normal captcha? Because [captcha.net](http://captcha.net) and [recaptcha.net](http://recaptcha.net) are the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/54 "2012-08-16T20:34:58Z")
[These](http://www.bugtreat.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Captcha-Image-Verification-Code-php-script.gif) are what I think of as captchas, as opposed to the OCR text ones. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/55 "2012-08-16T20:44:50Z")
> [@Rubixcube](#): > > Where did you go for the normal captcha? Because [captcha.net](http://captcha.net) and [recaptcha.net](http://recaptcha.net) are the same thing. I questioned the same thing. I didn’t know if there were two or not. That’s why I asked. I was only familiar with the recaptcha. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/56 "2012-08-17T13:10:33Z")
I’ve never gotten an equation on the left hand side, which is the only part which needs to be typed in correctly. I post an approximation for the right hand side and figure they’ll type it out manually when the book is digitised. ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/57 "2012-08-17T17:17:50Z")
> [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > Argggh. I had to fill out a form, on one of my suppliers websites, that took about 10 minutes and a lot of cutting and pasting. At the bottom was a reCAPTCHA. It was stupidly difficult and I got it wrong. Which lead to the whole page being wiped clean, and another 10 minutes of cutting and pasting. Bad page design PLUS reCAPTCHA. This isn’t a problem with the reCAPTCHA, it’s just very bad form design. ---
**Author:** ![jacobsta811](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jacobsta811/32/2893_2.png) [@jacobsta811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacobsta811)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2012, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598/58 "2012-08-19T14:40:16Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > There are two of them? Captcha and reCaptcha aren’t the same thing? CAPTCHA is the name of the entire technique - any box you see that has you input letters/numbers from an image, often with lines, squiggles, etc, is a CAPTCHA. ReCaptcha is one specific implementation of captcha - there are probably thousands of others, but ReCaptcha is very popular. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recaptcha-is-the-worst/631598.md?page=2)