While captchas work pretty well today, new types of attacks are happening all the time. In 2016, researchers discovered that they could defeat captchas by using AI to recognize objects in images. Then last year, it was shown that they could also bypass captchas by recognizing human faces. Now, some bot farms are using machine learning to figure out ways to beat captchas. So, does this mean that they’re going to disappear soon?
Can Bots Beat Captcha?
The short answer is “no,” but they are changing.
Captchas are still incredibly useful for stopping bots from submitting spam, and they’ll probably never go away completely. However, we can expect to see a lot more captchas that look different for each user. Captchas will also continue shifting to keep up with the ways that bots can figure out how to break them.
The good news is that the captchas that use images and audio will likely become more sophisticated over time. So, even if you have trouble reading some of them now, they’ll become easier to read over time.
This is great news for users who don’t want to have to decipher images and audio every time they want to log into their favorite sites. It also means that people won’t have to deal with annoying captchas on sites where they don’t actually need them (like Facebook).
While this doesn’t mean that captchas are going away entirely, it does mean that you should expect to encounter more of them in the future. This means that you should make sure that you can read the captchas on your favorite sites when you first sign up for them. If you find yourself avoiding a site because it has captchas, then it might be time to find another one.
The Future of Captchas
While captchas aren’t going away, the way that they look will probably change quite a bit in the coming years. As bots get better at recognizing images and audio, captchas will become more sophisticated, but they’ll also start looking more like regular forms. Instead of putting them on buttons, they might be put right into the fields where you enter your information. Captchas are also changing in other ways. For example, Google has released a captcha-like feature called “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA” that’s designed to let people enter information without having to solve a captcha.
When it comes to understanding whether or not they need captchas, websites will probably rely more on user reports than they do now. For example, if the number of reports you submit for spam goes up dramatically, then a website may decide to ask you to pass a captcha test. This is just meant as a way for users to help website owners identify and block spammers without having to show them captchas all the time.
With all of these changes, it’s hard to say what the future of captchas really looks like. One thing is for sure though, captchas will continue to be used for a long time. Captchas serve an important purpose for both website owners and users. While bots are getting better at overcoming them, captchas will continue to adapt and pay off in the end.
Can Bots Beat Captcha? What do you think the future of captcha will look like? Let us know in the comments below!