Author Topic: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!  (Read 7877 times)

Offline gh_origin

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OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« on: November 24, 2020, 09:42:48 am »
It took me nearly 10 mins just to register. I dragged the images again and again without any luck for a while before, thank God, the green check appeared and it allowed me continue. Please note that after I passed that anti-spam captcha everything is not yet done but I have to reload the page and retype everything again because the forums software said there were errors. But IMHO, it's just an out of time problem since the information I entered is always identical.

Please consider to switch to something else. As I recall, even large code hosting service like GitHub just required me to rotate an image to be able to register to their service. This method is simple and effective. If it's not effective, why GitHub ever used it at all? There must be something more simple but still effective than the current captcha!

Registering to this forums is real suffering for me! My eyesight is bad and not to mention cultural differences that most of the time I found I just put the images on the right category but the fact is it's not, the captcha service decided something else. It's just a trial and error game for me to be able to get over it and it's real annoying!

BTW, might I asked you why you just banned Firefox? To be able to view this forums, just viewing, not even registering, I have to switch to the Edge Chromium based browser since my Firefox is banned. I tried on another computer running Ubuntu and it's the same. Firefox is what we got installed by default most of the time on Linux and most of us just use it. Switching browser is easy but I want to know why my favorite browser was banned. Thanks.

p/s: The old Firefox derived Pale Moon browser is not banned. That make me wondering why?

Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2020, 12:34:00 pm »
Please consider to switch to something else. As I recall, even large code hosting service like GitHub just required me to rotate an image to be able to register to their service. This method is simple and effective. If it's not effective, why GitHub ever used it at all? There must be something more simple but still effective than the current captcha!
Things aren't that easy and that comparable.
GitHub is a huge service and I suppose they have 10x the people compared to the whole C::B dev team to just handle/manage the service.
In the small forum world spam is a real issue, unfortunately.

BTW, might I asked you why you just banned Firefox? To be able to view this forums, just viewing, not even registering, I have to switch to the Edge Chromium based browser since my Firefox is banned. I tried on another computer running Ubuntu and it's the same. Firefox is what we got installed by default most of the time on Linux and most of us just use it. Switching browser is easy but I want to know why my favorite browser was banned. Thanks.
It is not banned. I'm using firefox 83.0 to write this message.
I suppose you use a fanatically configured firefox which disables any non-https traffic.
(most of the time I ignore long posts)
[strangers don't send me private messages, I'll ignore them; post a topic in the forum, but first read the rules!]

wimc

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2020, 02:35:17 pm »
Typed this with Firefox 83 with Bodhi Linux.

Offline omlk

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2020, 02:08:51 am »
"It is not banned. I'm using firefox 83.0 to write this message.
I suppose you use a fanatically configured firefox which disables any non-https traffic."

Enable in settings Firefox 83.0 HTTPS only
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/11/17/firefox-83-introduces-https-only-mode/

After that, the forum does not open at all :(

Offline gh_origin

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2020, 06:41:04 am »
I don't know what's wrong with my setup but as someone who used VirtualBox VMs intensively I could confirm any Firefox versions from 60 ESR (on any system, including Windows, Linux, Solaris,...), was banned. The only thing I could do with them is load the forums' main index but if I click on a topic an error appears and it will not let me access the page. The Pale Moon browser, which derived from very old Firefox code base, doesn't have such problem. I don't have older Firefox versions to test but I think it's the same. The forums seems to ban any browsers identify itself as Firefox. Meanwhile the old Internet Explorer 11 has no problem loading the site.

I guess it's something to do with the user agent. It seemed modern Pale Moon (which I used to test with), no longer uses Firefox compatible user agent anymore but their own user agent string now: https://www.palemoon.org/support/prefs-advanced-general

Offline gh_origin

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2020, 06:47:24 am »
@omlk: what's wrong with your avatar or Edge Chromium is just crazy?


wimc

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2020, 07:15:05 am »
@omlk: what's wrong with your avatar or Edge Chromium is just crazy?

https://i.imgur.com/vJVYorm.png

I see the huge image, its Just oversized (1080x1080px).

Offline omlk

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2020, 04:51:43 pm »
@omlk: what's wrong with your avatar or Edge Chromium is just crazy?

https://i.imgur.com/vJVYorm.png

I see the huge image, its Just oversized (1080x1080px).

This is a problem with the forum engine because it does not reduce the image

Offline Miguel Gimenez

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2020, 05:28:24 pm »
Then remove it or choose another one, don't blame the forum engine.

Offline gh_origin

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2020, 03:21:00 pm »
Firefox is definitely banned. Confirmed again today.

It's not really Firefox but Basilisk, forked from Firefox 52 ESR.

The later screenshot is on Pale Moon, forked long before Firefox 52 ESR.

Basilisk is vanilla without any customization.

Pale Moon was set to use Firefox compatibility User Agent (it's indeed the default, I wrongly claimed that it uses it own User Agent by default, that's wrong).

Offline gh_origin

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #10 on: December 20, 2020, 08:49:11 am »
Confirm again with Firefox 84 on Debian.


Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: OMG! Please simplify the anti-spam captcha!
« Reply #11 on: December 20, 2020, 09:27:43 am »
I have no problem with using ff 83.0. Be patient. The web experience would improve, soon.
(most of the time I ignore long posts)
[strangers don't send me private messages, I'll ignore them; post a topic in the forum, but first read the rules!]