The ultimate worst CAPTCHA - thanks, Microsoft

Appletax

Appletax

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When I went to create a Microsoft Account for a client, Microsoft required me to accurately complete the most ridiculous and time consuming CAPTCHA I have ever dealt with. I failed it twice. Huge pain in the hind end. The 85-year-old man I was helping would totally not have been able to do it himself. They need to eliminate this immediately.

Here it is:

Ultimate Worst Captcha.jpg
 
@Appletax,

No one could possibly see more complaining than I do, and I consider much of it to be legitimate, about Captchas. I have long felt that a very great many things that are requiring them absolutely do not need them.

But for things that do, recent changes in computing (and AI in particular) has been a game changer in what machines can do, and they can do old style "select all pictures containing" captchas with ease.

I've been telling my blind and vision impaired clients for a very long time that Captchas are simply not going away, and they do need to complain whenever they encounter versions that do not give an accessible alternative. But even those accessible alternatives, most often audio challenges, are difficult to impossible for the deaf-blind.

There really is no security challenge that every blessed user in the world can complete successfully independently. We want the majority of them to be reasonably easy for "your average Joe/Jane" to complete, but a blind individual or an 85-year-old with minimal computer experience is not "your average Joe/Jane." The degree of sophistication with computer use is only increasing as those born prior to the computer age are dying off and those who've known computers for years/decades are coming behind.
 
I've been staring at that thing for 5 minutes and I genuinely don't understand what they want you to even do. The thing is completely nonsensical. The picture on the left looks like an MRI image with the number 7 and a techno teardrop. I fail to see how that correlates to the picture on the right at all as the only commonality between them is they both have the number 7.

Why are Microsoft's Captchas so bloody freaking awful? I thought the one with the rotating pandas was bad. That's nothing compared to this abomination.
 
sapphirescales said:
I've been staring at that thing for 5 minutes and I genuinely don't understand what they want you to even do. The thing is completely nonsensical. The picture on the left looks like an MRI image with the number 7 and a techno teardrop. I fail to see how that correlates to the picture on the right at all as the only commonality between them is they both have the number 7.

Why are Microsoft's Captchas so bloody freaking awful? I thought the one with the rotating pandas was bad. That's nothing compared to this abomination.
Click to expand...

This is step 4 of 5 (too many!) You have to click the arrows to make the image in orbit #7 match the image on the left. The images in the orbits are smaller and more blurry.
 
sapphirescales said:
I've been staring at that thing for 5 minutes and I genuinely don't understand what they want you to even do. The thing is completely nonsensical. The picture on the left looks like an MRI image with the number 7 and a techno teardrop. I fail to see how that correlates to the picture on the right at all as the only commonality between them is they both have the number 7.

Why are Microsoft's Captchas so bloody freaking awful? I thought the one with the rotating pandas was bad. That's nothing compared to this abomination.
Click to expand...
I had one a day or two ago. You click the direction arrows until the items line up. The number should line up with the other numbers in such a way that the items line up, as well.
 
britechguy said:
@Appletax,

But for things that do, recent changes in computing (and AI in particular) has been a game changer in what machines can do, and they can do old style "select all pictures containing" captchas with ease.
Click to expand...
Select all the squares with a bus, bicycle, fire hydrant, sidewalk, etc......... I absolutely HATE those things. Some sites will accept you're a human, after the first one, if you get right. Some will make you do 4 or 5, even if you get every one correct on the first one.
 
ThatPlace928 said:
Some sites will accept you're a human, after the first one, if you get right. Some will make you do 4 or 5, even if you get every one correct on the first one.
Click to expand...

I have never, even once, had anything accepted except ALL images containing "thing X" to get me verified, and these days I've had times where that step completed (successfully) I still have to check one of those "I'm a human" checkboxes.

As to the Microsoft example, I've had a number of this type of Captcha but usually with little animals, or pointing fingers on a hand drawing, that you have to orient to match the direction dictated by another photo (usually the same animal or hand). I figured this had to be a variant on the "give the correct orientation" Captcha, which is in no way limited to Microsoft.
 
Appletax said:
When I went to create a Microsoft Account for a client, Microsoft required me to accurately complete the most ridiculous and time consuming CAPTCHA I have ever dealt with. I failed it twice. Huge pain in the hind end. The 85-year-old man I was helping would totally not have been able to do it himself. They need to eliminate this immediately.

Here it is:

View attachment 16526
Click to expand...
Yes, I've suffered this too :mad:
They are probably trying to stop even genuine people creating an account
 
frase said:
Damn they are going to have solve The Zodiac code next!
Click to expand...

There are far too many in the security end of things who believe, to the core of their being, that "too much is never enough."

Usability matters, and security has to be balanced against usability. And the larger the user base, the more you need to consider what those users can do and/or are willing to do. People do abandon all sorts of things that become unacceptably difficult for them to use with reasonable ease.
 
I had that one yesterday (with the "orbits"). I seriously had trouble just figuring out what to do, then I had trouble matching the scaled down "orbit" images with the larger one I was supposed to match. My customer helped me figure it out! These new captchas are an absolute shocker.
 
Just chiming in on the ridiculousness of these things. Plus reminding myself that CAPTCHA is the most tortured acronym in the tech world: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
 
Microsoft's CAPTCHA team is tasked with making a CAPTCHA that ChatGPT can't defeat.

The problem is... as soon as you come up with something the bot can defeat it in less than a week. Once the bot figures it out, all the rest of the LLMs take up the charge. Now the directory has millions of fake accounts in it. How to stop it? Could you imagine keeping that mess online?

I CAPTCHAs suck, but they're the only tool we have. As usual, the good guys are behind.
 
Sky-Knight said:
As usual, the good guys are behind
Click to expand...
Yes. Pretty much every day I have the conversation with someone that includes the sentiment that the burden of security is always on the victim. 20 years ago, I was sure - no POSITIVE that everything would switch to biometrics and that would be the end of it. One of my poorer predictions - :D
 
HCHTech said:
Yes. Pretty much every day I have the conversation with someone that includes the sentiment that the burden of security is always on the victim. 20 years ago, I was sure - no POSITIVE that everything would switch to biometrics and that would be the end of it. One of my poorer predictions - :D
Click to expand...
An easy mistake to make, I probably did the same thing and just don't remember. Because 20 years ago I'm pretty sure I was too stupid to think... hmm... if someone gets the digitized version of my finger print... how exactly do I change it?
 
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