Google Is Finally Done With CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA is a form of security protocol that has been around for almost as long as the internet has existed. However, it has become rather old and users have found it both annoying and stale. While most other online entities have already dropped the extra step in trying to access anything, Google is the most noteworthy since it affects and annoys the most number of the same people.

Google isn’t really getting rid of the CAPTCHA security protocol, but rather, simply making it invisible, Slash Gear reports. It will still make the familiar box and letter, numbers, and pictures appear if Google believes that the user is a bot. In order to determine which is which, a machine learning and risk analysis program will be used.

The search engine company explains that this allows it to determine if the user is a human or a machine via factors like mouse movement and the IP address of the user. By doing so, real people won’t be affected by spam protection system while still keeping the bots out.

“reCAPTCHA offers more than just spam protection,” the company writes. “Every time our CAPTCHAs are solved, that human effort helps digitize text, annotate images, and build machine learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.”

As BGR points out, reCAPTCHA was first created in order to stop bots that were scalping tickets online. From there, it expanded to websites that were protecting movies, music, and even dating opportunities.

These types of security protocols are also great for stopping DDoS attacks, which were escalating in severity up until only a few weeks ago. CAPTCHA won’t completely prevent attacks like what took out a significant portion of the internet last year. However, it will at least minimize these instances, which users can definitely appreciate.