Bots are better at beating ‘are you a robot?’ tests than humans are

Technology

The use of CAPTCHA tests to prove that website users are human and not bots might come under scrutiny given research showing that bots complete them faster and more accurately than we do

By Matthew Sparkes

Bots seem to have mastered passing the CAPTCHA tests designed to check if website users are human

UC Irvine et al. (2023); Stephen Frost/Alamy

Bots are better and faster than humans at online CAPTCHA tests designed to keep them out of websites. The finding calls into question whether we should continue using these kind of security measures, given how much frustration they can cause for people.

A cat-and-mouse game has played out for almost two decades between website developers who want to keep bots out of their sites and the hackers who want to bypass those protections …

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