Captcha not working

[David Jannsen]

I just submitted a story called "The Elopement" and during the submission process, Captcha wasn't working. It appeared to upload the story, but I have no idea if it did or not.

As an alternative, there used to be a Javascript around a few years ago that created, randomly, a mathematical equation. This was a simple question that was unanswerable by computers, it takes human mind to see an answer and place it into the box. It is simple, effective and does not require any substantial support. Easier to set up and use than Captcha, I suggest.

[brody]

The Captcha on Kristen's site was working just a couple of days ago for me.
I do know that sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get it to go through (almost like it is reacting badly to the browser I'm using).  I seem to have more success with FireFox or Internet Explorer (believe it or not) than I do with Chrome—especially Chrome in "Incognito Mode"!

Best of luck!
-brody

[David Jannsen]

Thanks brody, but I refuse to use Internet Exploder, and Firefox has proven to be more of a headache than chrome. The only thing I really don't like about chrome is this nonsense of Google Analytics, just another weapon that will reveal itself as a useful tool employed to curb our freedom.
My understanding is that IE is going to be dropped by the Dark Side, replaced with an independent browser fully compatible with HTML5... or so I have been given to understand. Which I suspect as Windoze is more and more linuxified, it will become a cross platform browser. but I don't know.

As far as Captcha is concerned, I have had a lot of trouble with it over the years, regardless of browser. Like Java, this is really old ideas and tired technology, time for it to be replaced and Javascript seems the tool to do that. Simple to code, simple to activate, no issues with browsers or platforms, and costs nothing in overhead to maintain, and no license to buy. The best part is that a simple maths question, like "What is 2 times 2 = [...ans...]" is seriously difficult for an automated process to answer. I would go so far as to suggest that the respondent is either human, ET or AI, neither of which are likely at this point.

In the end, Captchas are being broken all the time now, so they are really no longer secure, time to move on I would think.

Here are a couple of thoughts about it:
http://webdesignledger.com/tips/why-you-should-stop-using-captchas 
http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/07/02/why-you-should-never-use-a-captcha/
http://moz.com/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion-rates

OK, none of these are Captcha lovers, all profess to hate it, but they also give reasons why it is not a good tool to use.

[David Jannsen]

This is getting seriously weird now. OK I swallowed my pride and used Internet Exploder, and got the reCaptcha up...WHAT??? reCaptcha? That is Google's variation of the original Captcha software...so..WTF does it not work in Chrome??? Unbelievable...

[RopeFiend]

I hit Google's recaptcha just about EVERY SINGLE DAY using Chrome.  It works for me every time, on a wide variety of sites.  I suspect your Chrome is buggered, or else you're using some sort of script or ad blocking addon that's hosing the Google site that the recaptcha is coming from.  There's a large-ish chunk of Javascript and the the image(s) are generated on-the-fly at api.google.com (if memory serves).  Screw with either one and the recaptcha doesn't play.

For several monthsall I was getting was the captcha part of the image, not the other word that they were trying to use PEOPLE to do character-recognition (for free!).  From all of the words I've gotten over the last few years, it appears that Google is trying to read some old religious texts as well as a couple of (somewhat) scientific papers.  For a while there the captcha was numbers on mailboxes or houses, things that they'd already geo-coded so Google knew what number that image meant.

recaptcha example:


BTW, for those of you that don't read Archaic British very frequently, that third letter in the second word is an 's'.  I don't know which years that nonsense was used, but the first 's' in a word would look like that, and subsequent use of 's' in the same word would have the normal 's' symbol.  WHY they did that is incomprehensible.  That funny symbol looks a lot like an 'f', and is frequently mistaken for it when someone doesn't know that out-of-date British tradition.  Fortunately they stopped doing it.

[David Jannsen]

That's possible, been using AdBlock Plus and Kristen's is the only site I use regularly that has reCaptcha on it. Usually, as soon as it appears, I bail out. Not that I am anti- much but I usually cannot be bothered with it.
Thanks for your input, RopeFiend, so I have whitelisted asstr.org and hope that will fix the problem... but you never know...

[Abadone]

It did it one once .. so I might or might not have uploaded a story twice .. it never went to the next page so I think it did not send .. so submitted it again. This time the capta did appear.

[JennyAsh]

Regardless of which browser or how this or that software performs (or not), I simply cannot see the Captcha graphics. I get nothing. This means it doesn't work properly as a submissions tool. I have submitted many stories, but have not been able to now for 2-3 months. I'm not going to change my browser. Chrome works well for me on everything else. This tool is now stopping me from doing so. I suggest the site runners change this cumbersome tool or I for one will emigrate to another site to both read and post stories.

I've had a huge response to my stories on here, so it would be a shame if I could no longer reach that audience - as is happening now.

I'm very frustrated and rather fed up this hasn't been sorted by now.

[RopeFiend]

Head on over to bleepingcomputer.com and then click the DOWNLOADS tab at the top, then hit the SORT BY drop-down to sort by downloads.  Get AdwCleaner by Xplode - it's one of the best I've found at removing malware.  I suspect your Chrome is baffed, which is why you can't see the reCaptcha.  AdwCleaner *may* fix that up for you.

BEFORE you do the CLEAN part, save a log file and PM it to me.  I'll let you know what to remove.  AdwCleaner gets a bit overzealous on it's identification of 'malware', and it keeps wanting to unhook my third-party firewall.

The problem is, adware/malware can infest Chrome like no other browser.  If your Chrome is truly futzed, then the only cure is to uninstall it and re-install it again.  I've had to do that a few times when someone's system had particularly nasty malware infesting Chrome.

Since reCaptcha is a Google function, any malware that tries to redirect Google hits can interfere with reCaptcha.  I truly suspect it's YOUR system(s) and not ASSTR as it's working for other people just fine.

I just took reCaptcha apart, see if you can see this image:
http://tinyurl.com/q9z4pzq

That tinyurl link sends you directly to www google com/recaptcha/api/image=<hairy long string>

edit: too late, the captcha is already dead and sends up an error message.  Lemme know if you want to try another and I'll disassemble a reCaptcha frame again.