CATCH YOU OUT
People are just learning how the ‘I am not a robot’ CAPTCHA checkbox actually works… and their minds are blown
PEOPLE are just learning how the CAPTCHA checkbox actually works.
The tedious activity involves a pop-up appearing on screen asking Brits to tick a box saying "I am not a robot", type out image text or sometimes select images that correspond with a prompt.
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But internet users have been left baffled on finding out how CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) actually works.
According to the cybersecurity firm Cloudfare, CAPTCHA tracks the movement of your cursor before anything is clicked.
It's experts explained: "Even the most direct motion by a human has some amount of randomness on the microscopic level: tiny unconscious movements that bots can't easily mimic.
"If the cursor's movement contains some of this unpredictability, then the test decides that the user is probably legitimate."
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However, the powerful technology doesn't stop there and might even end up checking out your search history.
Google-owned software reCAPTCHA "may assess the cookies stored by the browser on a user device and the device's history in order to tell if the user is likely to be a bot," says Cloudfare.
BBC's panel show QI confirmed this further as host Sandi Toksvig sought to educate us all on what this seemingly easy exercise is.
"Let us say, for example, before you tick the box you watched a couple of cat videos, you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg, you checked your Gmail account before you got down to work – all of that makes them think that you must be a human."
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Sandi continued: "Essentially when you are clicking 'I am not a robot' you are instructing the site to have a look at your data and decide for itself."
If the software is still not satisfied you are a human, then it can throw yet another test at you. "It's slightly spooky," she said.
The QI video has been doing the rounds online and not everyone is happy with knowing the truth behind the CAPTCHA tasks.
"Mind blown," one wrote.
Another said it "feels like an invasion of privacy".
However, many online users rallied against the existence of CAPTCHA and the inconvenience it causes - regardless of what it's for.
"CAPTCHA test is so annoying. What do you mean I'm a robot?" said one.
"I’ve failed so many CAPTCHA challenges lately but I promise I will be one of the good robots. You’ll see!" another joked.
A third mused on what happens if a robot got caught, writing: "How many robots have gotten away with checking the 'I'm not a robot' CAPTCHA?
"What happens if they get caught? Is there an AI jail? How long is the sentence? Who is the judge? Will they stop clicking the box if released?"
A few years ago rumours began to surface that the software was not developed to banish bots but to instead help to train them in human ways.
reported back in 2018 that "you've been training AI for years without realising it".
"All those visual puzzles add up to AI advances," they said.
Techradar claims that millions of people have been unknowingly doing work for big companies.
Without realising, they reported, online users have been performing small tasks as part of CAPTCHA that needed doing anyway, such as transcribing words for the purpose digitising books.
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More sinisterly, you also might have been training AI on how to correctly identify objects on maps, through the picture-based exercises.
In that sense, AI can been trained to recognise those objects in other images in applications - building up a sturdy database for machine learning.
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