Google announce "Invisible reCAPTCHA"

It won’t be long before you no longer have to squint at your screen to enter the horrificly mashed up text, known as CAPTCHA. Google have finally unveiled/announced the new and improved reCAPTCHA (a.k.a reCAPTCHA 2.0, reCAPTCHA v2 or Invisible reCAPTCHA).

Table of Contents

What is reCAPTCHA?

Google’s definition:

reCAPTCHA is a free service that protects your website from spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA uses an advanced risk analysis engine and adaptive CAPTCHAs to keep automated software from engaging in abusive activities on your site. It does this while letting your valid users pass through with ease.

reCAPTCHA offers more than just spam protection. Every time our CAPTCHAs are solved, that human effort helps digitize text, annotate images, and build machine learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.

Old reCAPTCHA:

New reCAPTCHA:

Why do we need a new version and how does it work?

The new version brings about some great changes for everyone. Not only is it simpler and easier to use, but they’re also much more secure.

No longer will web users need to enter obscure and random words to prove that they are, in fact, human. The new reCAPTCHA monitors your browsing habit, prior to submission to validate your humanity. This new method uses machine learning( “AI”) and improved risk analysis engines. You will only need to solve a CAPTCHA puzzle if your site navigation is suspicious/robotic.

Why do we need reCAPTCHA at all?

reCAPTCHA is essential for website developers/owners as it prevents a lot of spam and malicious bot attacks, on areas such as comments forms, contact forms etc.

Not only does it provide website owners with an extra layer of security, but it also helps Google enhance their machine learning (AI) database and capabilities, as everytime a CAPTCHA is solved, the images/text are transferred back to Google and used to contextually teach computers. This improves mapping functionalities, transcribing books, language translation (we all love Google Translate)