Why captchas are getting harder

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It's not you — captchas really are getting harder. The worst part is that you’re partly to blame.

Correction: At 5:22, we say that Google uses reCaptcha V2 data to train their self-driving cars and improve Google maps. While they have used V2 tests to help improve Google maps, according to an email from a Waymo representative (Google’s self-driving car project), they aren’t using this image data to train their autonomous cars. For more on the future of self-driving cars, check out this article from Vox’s Kelsey Piper:

A captcha is a simple test that intends to distinguish between humans and computers. While the test itself is simple, there's a lot happening behind the scenes. The answers we give captchas end up being used to make AI smarter, thus ratcheting up the difficulty of future captcha tests.

But captchas can be broken by hackers. The tests we’re most familiar with already have been broken. Captcha makers try to stay ahead of the curve but have to balance increasing the difficulty of the test with making sure any person on earth — regardless of age, education, language, etc. — can still pass it. And eventually, they might have to phase out the test almost entirely.

Read more about captchas from the Verge:


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