Has CAPTCHA ever deterred you from visiting a website?

Question

I'm currently developing a bot protection testing tool - BotMeNot (https://botmenot.com/) - and one of the most commonly implemented anti-bot measures is reCAPTCHA.

It's a relatively efficient way of blocking out bot traffic. However, it's believed to sometimes come at a price of being too annoying for the real human visitors.

I wanted to get ProductHunt's take on this. Has a CAPTCHA task/riddle ever been too annoying for you, so that you've actually left the website and started doing something else or went to another website with the same functionality.

Dawn Veltri · Accepted Answer

It only bothers me if it requires multiple tasks.

Misha Krunic · Answer

@jessie_m Makes sense, thanks for sharing!

Misha Krunic · Answer

@dawn_veltri1 I see. Thanks for letting me know!

Misha Krunic · Answer

@saqib301 Yes, I think the extremely distorted letterforms can sometimes be very problematic. Especially some borderline cases like the uppercase "I" and the lowercase "l" or zeros and 0s, etc.

Ng Fang Kiang · Answer

Sometimes when using VPN.

Eunsol Yoon · Answer

@jessie_m How are you

Eunsol Yoon · Answer

Hi

Ryan Sparks · Answer

@saqib301 Yep, even gmail has this weird distorted text they want you to type in. I get that wrong half the time because I can barely read it.

Ryan Sparks · Answer

OMG, I hate captchas! They are so utterly annoying and the ten seconds it takes may as well be 10 seconds of a slow web page. Half the time I can't get it to work properly and I have to keep trying to find the cross walks and light poles. I give up on a lot of sites and move on. There are better ways to test for bots.

Saqib Ali · Answer

@ryansparks I know right, it's really bothersome!

Saqib Ali · Answer

@price2spy Yes, exactly! The letterforms are the hardest part.

Saqib Ali · Answer

Simple checkmarks and text CAPTCHAs don't really become a problem. Things get annoying when they try on newer ways or difficult to read texts.

Jessie · Answer

@price2spy 🙌

Jessie · Answer

It can indeed be too much sometimes, but it never stopped me from visiting the site because I understand it's importance.

Misha Krunic · Answer

@ryansparks I understand how you feel. Especially when there's like a pixel or two of the light pole in a captcha section. Luckily, they work on a statistical basis, so it's not that detrimental to get everything right.

When you say there are better ways to test for bots, do you have any specific ways in mind?

Has CAPTCHA ever deterred you from visiting a website?

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