Are reCAPTCHA CAPTCHAs getting harder or is just me

As I have been testing sites, I have found reCAPTCHAs getting more and more difficult to read. Is it just me or are others having this problem too?

Along with this, I had a user this morning complain about receiving a Bristish Pound character in their reCAPTCHA. Of course the user didn't know what to do, even though I have message stating they can click the reload/refresh icon to get a new CAPTCHA.

Unfortunately, this implementation is on a site often used by people over 60 years of age, so more complicated or confusing CAPTCHAs are a problem, but the site still receives a lot of people attempting to produce spam.

Despite the opinions presented until now I actually like the reCAPTCHA system. I like it mostly because I consider that it manages to solve two problems at once: verifying human identity and help digitalizes writings (For those of you who don't know here is why it uses 2 words and not one : reCAPTCHA philosophy

So I encourage all of you to try passing the reCAPTCHA tests as often as you can because you are really helping a good cause.

The worst are the ones that are case sensitive. L, l, I, o O 0 ?

I have a hard time reading most Captcha's, but I agree that reCAPTCHA's are a special nuisance.

Yes, Captchas are getting more difficult to read.

I can't find the link right now but I believe the Microsoft Passport (MSN and Hotmail) are the hardest ones to break.

The problem is that whenever software gets better at detecting the text, the text has to become more difficult to read.

The irony I guess is that CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" but it won't be long for computers to catch up and they become too hard for the majority of humans to read. At this time they'll go away and some other version of a CAPTCHA will be used.

Perhaps photo based CAPTCHAS using googles image labelling system?

Ironic, because although computers are certainly getting smarter, people are probably getting dumber, too.

I think they are getting harder, I know I tend to fail every captcha I try at least once, sometimes twice. There are good alternatives emerging though. For example, Geoff Appleby shows nine photos and gives a text description for you to select three of them (scroll down to the comments form).

Such a system would be very accessible to the profiles you outlined (the photos could be quite big). Also a lot easier to implement.

Definitely getting harder now. My most recent one had something completely indistinguishable, next to 'are' written upside down.

I find reCAPTCHA's to be the absolute worst for usability. I often avoid sites that use them.

I don't mind that sites need to do these tests, but they don't need to be so near-impossible to figure out.

Perhaps reCAPTCHA, as it starts to run lower on words that people get correctly, starts paring harder and harder 'unknkown' words as people filter out all the easy ones?

I think eventually CAPTCHA is going to stop being feasible and there's going to have to be some kind of universally recognized "passport" system for websites. Some kind of account that you pay a couple bucks for and it identifies you as a human when you sign up for a website.

Then, if you start using that account for your spam robots, you can get banned universally. Sites could even retroactively clean up posts based on those bans. shrug Just a thought

I've been identified as not-human several times by the Stack Overflow blog comment captcha. Now I just keep requesting new captchas until I get one I can read. Usually only takes ~3 tries.

Update: According to Ben Maurer, the Chief Engineer at reCAPTCHA, who commented on my blog about this, over 96% of reCAPTCHAs are solved correctly. So maybe we as a group are just getting dumber?

reCAPTCHA will always get harder.

As they make tools to break reCAPTCHA, they will be using the same technology to help digitize text, therefore only the ones that the latest technology cannot read will be used as a CAPTCHA.

Its spy vs spy, except its a win win for reCAPTCHA and human knowledge.

The only problem they face is if they have a reader that is so good it never fails, reCAPTCHA will no longer work, but it would be a good problem to have for digitization of human knowledge.

Quite a few downloading sites have just stopped using captchas. All you really need to do is log the IP address of the client and stop giving them access for x minutes.

Same thing can be used for passwords. Did the user mistype his password 3 times? Let them wait five minutes to try again. And give them the option to refresh it by sending them an e-mail.

About time we get rid of those captchas. Computers and algorithms have become fast enough to crack even the hardest ones. While only making it frustrating for people.

Yes. It is getting harder. If everyone realized how reCAPTCHA works, everyone should pass even with an unreadable word. reCAPTCHA always shows 2 words: one of the words reCAPTCHA knows its ASCII representation through OCR, the another, you can fail, because reCAPTCHA doesn't know the correct answer. When I find a too difficult reCAPTCHA I simply type "verydifficultword" along with the readable word.

The thing to keep in mind about ReCAPTCHA is that they are images actually scanned from real books and articles. As such you have to be aware that funky punctuation and stuff can make it in--it's not just words. For example I've seen partial words that end in a hyphen (that obviously occurred on the end of a line) as well as dollar-signs, numbers (like 1. Something), etc.

I find if you bear in mind the origin it makes a heck of a lot more sense and is easier to solve.

Also interestingly, you only need to get one of the reCAPTCHA words right, because the other is used to aid in the digitization. However you won't know which is which. :)

Yes, it is getting harder. What ever may be the good thing it does, it should be usable. I tried 3 or 4 times on their audio captcha and failed each time. Though captchas try to solve a real issue, for those who can not see the captcha image and have to rely on audio captchas it is a big problem. Also not all the sites which uses captcha provides audio options. In any case, I think we'll have to keep proving to these machines that we are indeed humans for a long time to come.