[Resolved] hCaptcha is terrible

[Alexander]

Hey folks,

I was just presented with your “hCaptcha” and just went through THREE iterations of picking first pinnapples and then bananas ON A PLATE — when all I wanted to do was to log in and renew my license.

Please come up with something better, this is really getting in the way.

Thanks.
Alex.

[Tom]

Hi there,

Due to some spam issues, we simply don’t have a choice at this time.

If you have any suggestions for better methods that work we’re open to hearing them.

Thanks!

[Alexander]

I understand why captchas are used, but obviously don’t have a suggestions.

I wanted to let you know that it isn’t just a simple “pick three images” process with this particular captcha. I haven’t been prompted to solve three of these in a row, before I was allowed to log in. Am I too fast? Too slow? 😬

[Tom]

That definitely shouldn’t be necessary – I just adjusted the settings to be a little more relaxed, so hopefully that helps without causing any spam problems.

Thanks for letting us know!

[Joel]

I’ve had the same issue (and reported about it in the forums).

It took me 10 tries to log in. I had to report several requests as bugs before being able to move on to an image selection where I could log in.

I would really appreciate it if you could try to find a more reliable system as this one clearly isn’t working.

[Martin]

somehow my mouse movement and whatever is botlike, means if there is a captcha on a website I have to solve it. true for google reCaptcha and hcaptcha. Just had to go to 10(!) different iterations to point out traffic light yesterday. hcaptcha seams to be even more sensible. and worse hcaptcha seams to load slower… this is my experience as a user.
On the other hand I’m admin and developer to several sites which are hammered by spam, spam user registration, hacking attacks, etc. and bc of beyond awful Germans-“internet” laws, google reCaptcha is practical impossible to use here – if your take the situation serious. So I really tested every recpatcha, honeypot whatever alternative … and nothing comes even close to the google solution. And one word to the “just use honeypots” evangelicals, honeypots are totally useless unless your site is totally “egal” to the rest of the internet.
My solution is—ignoring the law situation and use Google reCAPTCHA and cleartalk + country blocking (China, Russia, Belarus). As awful as it is, but geo-blocking had the biggest impact. But if you are working international and have clients from these countries, this solution is gone.
The worst part of all – there are companies who pay real humans to solve captchas and these companies are providing an api including a documentation how to integrate this into your spamming solution. Even worse, the documentation is better than the one of 99% of most opensource software solutions / apis.

[Tom]

We do need to take GDPR seriously, so we’re not able to use Google.

This leaves us with two options, 2FA (email) or hCaptcha. While hCaptcha isn’t perfect, we receive far fewer angry emails from users than we did when had 2FA enabled for all users. While we would love a solution that makes everyone happy, this is the best we can do right now.

It’s something I’m monitoring and researching, hoping to find a better solution.

[Author]

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