For almost 20 years, Captcha tests, popularly known as the “Are you a robot” test, have been a nuisance for internet users everywhere.
From demanding you to “click all the squares with traffic lights” to asking you to identify squiggly-lettered riddles just as you’re about to complete an important task, these annoying digital tests that often test our patience were designed to keep bots from accessing websites.
Yet, in an ironic twist, the “I’m not a robot” tests that sometimes leave us scratching our heads while trying to prove our humanity to a machine don’t pose much of a challenge for bots. Yes, you read that right. A recent research study has found that bots are better and faster than humans at completing Captcha.
What is Captcha?
Captcha is the acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” These security features are used on websites and online services to determine whether the user is a human or a computer program, more commonly referred to as a bot.
There are various types of Captcha tests, including word problems i.e. distorted text, puzzles i.e. distorted images, or math problems i.e. additions and subtractions. The goal of these tasks is to outsmart the algorithm and keep automated bots from accessing or submitting information on websites. This security system is believed to play a crucial role in safeguarding websites against both bots and hackers using malicious coding to scrap content, create counterfeit accounts, and leave false reviews.
Read more: How to report a scam website?
How effective is a Captcha test against bots?
The researchers at the University of California, Irvine, analyzed the 200 most popular websites in the world and found that 120 of them used Captcha tests. Then, they recruited 1,400 people of different ages, sexes, educational levels, and locations, and asked each of them to perform 10 Captcha tests on these sites.
In the next stage, the researchers compared the successes of the human respondents to that of bots coded for the purpose of beating these tests. The results showed that the bots were much better at beating humans at Captcha tests.
For instance, humans took between 9 and 15 seconds to solve the Captcha tests involving distorted text with an accuracy rate of only 50% to 84%. Meanwhile, bots completed the same tests in less than a second with 99.8% accuracy, highlighting that these security measures are not nearly as effective as most website developers may believe.
“We do know for sure that they [the tests] are very much unloved. We didn’t have to do a study to come to that conclusion,” said lead researcher Gene Tsudik. “But people don’t know whether that effort, that colossal global effort that is invested into solving Captchas every day, every year, every month, whether that effort is actually worthwhile.”
Another researcher from UC Irvine, Andrew Searles, suggested companies should consider using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify bots instead of relying on such tests.
“There’s no easy way using these little image challenges or whatever to distinguish between a human and a bot anymore,” he explained.
Furthermore, it’s worth mentioning that the research study also included reCAPTCHA tests, which were introduced by Google in 2014. The test requires users to click on a box that says “I’m not a robot” and then decides whether the user is a human or a bot in disguise, depending on the part of the page they clicked.
The senior director of product management at Google Cloud, Jess Leroy, told New Scientist that they are committed to helping their customers protect their users.
“We are increasingly focused on recognizing and interrupting malicious activity, whether perpetrated by bots or humans,” he stated. “As such, we are able to help our customers prevent loss even as AI bots become better at masquerading as humans. Further, we have a very large focus on helping our customers protect their users without showing visual challenges, which is why we launched reCAPTCHA v3 in 2018,” Leroy added.
You can find the results of the study in the yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper, An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs.
Wrapping it up
So, as it turns out, bots are beating us at our own security game. The study by the researchers at UC Irvine highlighted that Captcha falls short when it comes to protecting our digital lifestyle, as keeping bots away from websites as many people previously thought. It also underscored the importance of continuous innovation in the field of digital security, so we can stay one step ahead of hackers and AI bots crawling the internet.
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