If you’ve ever filled in a form on the internet before, whether it be credit card details or a registration, chances are you’ve come across something called CAPTCHA. You see a picture of a few distorted letters and numbers and you’re asked to type in those characters to verify that you’re a human who can read.
CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” and it has been used by numerous websites and companies as a defence against bots. Google acquired reCAPTCHA back in 2009, a service that utilised CAPTCHA to help in the digitisation of books as well as giving CAPTCHA tests. Google then updated reCAPTCHA back in 2013 so that instead of replicating and an assortment of letters and numbers, a user would simply have to tick an “I’m not a robot” checkbox.
While on the surface it may not seem like a sound way of verifying the humanity behind the click, it actually determined that by analysing the clicking behaviour. If your click was too robot-like you were then given a more elaborate test.
But now the next iteration of reCAPTCHA is here; Invisible reCAPTCHA.
The new version is even more simple than clicking a checkbox. Instead, it works in the background as a user browses a website, determining if the user’s actions are human or robot-like. Google states that it uses a combination of machine learning and advanced risk analysis that adapts to new and emerging threats.
Site owners who utilise reCAPTCHA will have to switch over to Invisible reCAPTCHA to activate it. Users will not see challenges of any kind unless their behaviour is flagged by the system.
