WeHateCaptchas

Keep the bots out without annoying your users

2 followers

Keep the bots out without annoying your users

2 followers

wehatecaptchas is a captcha alternative. Instead of looking at squiggly text or finding images all you have to do is click a button. In the background your browser must perform complex math that makes spamming expensive.

Launch tags:Web App•Developer Tools•Maker Tools

Launch Team

Atlassian LoomShow, don't just tell with Loom

Promoted

Does it work on mobile phones? Does it require a certain amount of memory/ram? It seems to be checking forever on my phone (never completes) edit: completed after I wrote this comment (about 2 minutes later). That's a pretty long time to wait. On the subsequent tries it seems to complete very fast. So I guess the long calculation happens the first time?

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

@snetwork The difficulty is random but also defined by the webmaster. Tends to be slower on mobile.

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7yr ago

@daltonedwards yep, I noticed sometimes it's very quick and other times it takes forever. That's a critical thing though, which needs to be improved because 90% of the traffic nowadays is from mobiles and might piss off many legitimate users 😋

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7yr ago

Game of Coins

@daltonedwards @snetwork what you could so is increase the complexity per signup per IP .. so first signup is free second takes 5 seconds third takes a minute ;)

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

Thanks for checking out wehatecaptchas! My goal with this project is to balance simplicity and security. When you click the wehatecaptchas button your browser solves complex math problems in the background which are required to validate the captcha. If a spammer were to automate this process they'd be slowed down by this and it would potentially be expensive. In a lot of ways a traditional captcha might be harder to automate, but there is a thriving business where people are paid to solve those for spammers. wehatecaptchas combats that by requiring your computer to work hard for the answer. It's a quick process but imagine a spammer having to do it over and over. Not to mention - not all people can solve traditional captchas due to a disability, but anybody can click a button and wait. Hope you like it :)

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7yr ago

ClearList

@daltonedwards Congrats on the launch! 🚀

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

@satwaya thanks! 😁

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7yr ago

@daltonedwards Congrats on the launch ;)

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7yr ago

A lot of users I get come from low bandwidth, low quality mobilephone markets. Won't this slow them too much?

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

@achi_ram bandwidth wise, you only make 2 API requests for each captcha. (Getting the question and verifying the result). As for low quality mobile phones it might slow you down if you have a bad CPU.

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7yr ago

SocialBu

Pros: Nice idea. It can surely block spam bots without any visual hint to the normal user. Cons: Can still not replace captcha. Modern scrapers can use javascript/browser engines. Script should also be improved (bad API design)

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

@usamaejaz A future update is going to dynamically set the captcha difficulty to help combat automation. I agree it can be automated but it’ll be expensive. How do you believe the API design can be improved?

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7yr ago

SocialBu

@daltonedwards for example, you need to set the id which is "static". what if there are multiple forms on page? it should be possible to also specify custom submit message and so on. if i have a custom onSubmit handler and want to integrate this into that, its not possible right now. your code also adds custom pre-set message/html.

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

@usamaejaz thanks for your feedback I’ll keep all of this in mind 😄

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7yr ago

SVGX

I like the idea, especially since it's built on PHP :) I've had a little bit of a problem myself on one of my sites with spammers who had no trouble bypassing Google's Recaptcha. That's why I rolled out my own solution, which seems to do a much better job of keeping them away. If I keep having problems I'll definitely give yours a try.

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7yr ago

Songbox

I think you'll be acquired soon. This is a tremendous solution to a very real problem. Congratulations.

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7yr ago

Interesting. Does this have anything to do with bitcoin? If not, why not?

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7yr ago

1MB v3

Maker

@ryanleverington Doesn’t interface with a blockchain it’s just proof of work. There was a service called CoinHive that offered a similar proof of work captcha. The financial incentive made it get abused by hackers and spammers and gave them a bad reputation (they shut down). Also a captcha seems like a weird thing to monetize. That’s why I opted for no blockchain.

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7yr ago

@ryanleverington @daltonedwards + CoinHive is blocked by adblockers so your visitors may not be able to send the form.

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7yr ago

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