Anyone who has spent any time online in the last decade has probably found themselves at the business end of a Captcha code. Perhaps the most obtrusive and outdated aspect of the entire internet, these codes exist in order to tell humans apart from bots, and stop automated spamming and website flooding at the source. Unfortunately, however, the bots have evolved, but the Captcha system has not, and it's just as intrusive and frustrating now as it was when it was first introduced way back in 1997, but now it barely even works.
The purposefully obscured letters and numbers that make up this outdated system have been the bane of many an online existence, but they are now arguably doing more harm than good, as the bots have become clever enough to circumvent them, whilst us humans continue to find them a pointless hurdle. Mercifully, however, Google have now said that we should never have to enter a Captcha code again, as the technology has reportedly become clever enough to be able to tell a human from a bot without any human interaction. Many of us have undoubtedly seen the 'middle ground' option, dubbed No CAPTCHA, or reCAPTCHA, where we're asked to simply tick a box, but apparently we won't even need to do that any more, and honestly, it's about damn time!
A statement released by Google earlier this week, read: “Since the launch of No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA, millions of internet users have been able to attest they are human with just a single click. Now we're taking it a step further and making it invisible. Human users will be let through without seeing the 'I'm not a robot' checkbox, while suspicious ones and bots still have to solve the challenges.” The only caveat is that those humans will initially have to sign up for the service through Google, but that will be a small price to pay!
