CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) does what it says on the tin. It is a website integration that relies on the ability of humans to solve puzzles machines cannot. The core purpose of CAPTCHA is for humans to pass a test to tell the website or service they are human. It’s a security measure that has proved effective, even if users tend to be annoyed by it. You have undoubtedly seen CAPTCHA examples such as select all images of a car or re-write a blurred text. Google has been controlling CAPTCHA since it acquired reCAPTCHA in 2009. The company has evolved the service over the years, each time making it more efficient: ReCAPTCHA v1 was a very demanding authentication that wanted users to type text into a box. The follow up reCAPTCHA v2 streamlined the idea by adding further analysis tools. By doing so, Google would only need to ask around half of users to complete a puzzle.
ReCAPTCHA v3
Now, the company has release reCAPTCHA v3, which provides a “frictionless experience” according to Google. With CAPTCHA v3, site owners can spread the CAPTCHA across pages: “The reCAPTCHA adaptive risk analysis engine can identify the pattern of attackers more accurately by looking at the activities across different pages on your website,” Google says. At its core, reCAPTCHA v3 removes the human testing thanks to enhanced analysis capabilities. Therefore, Google recommends it is used across multiple pages: “In reCAPTCHA v3, we are introducing a new concept called “Action”—a tag that you can use to define the key steps of your user journey and enable reCAPTCHA to run its risk analysis in context. Since reCAPTCHA v3 doesn’t interrupt users, we recommend adding reCAPTCHA v3 to multiple pages.”
