Why Your "I'm Not a Robot" Click Isn't the Test

Clicking "I'm not a robot" isn't what proves you're human. And for years, the squiggly words you typed were doing a second job. Sources: - von Ahn et al., reCAPTCHA: Human-Based Character Recognition via Web Security Measures (Science, 2008): https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/reCAPTCHA_Science.pdf - Google acquires reCAPTCHA (Google blog, Sep 2009): https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-computers-to-read-google.html - Google using reCAPTCHA to read Street View addresses (TechCrunch, Mar 2012): https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/29/google-now-using-recaptcha-to-decode-street-view-addresses/ - Are you a robot? Introducing No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA (Google Security Blog, Dec 2014): https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introducing-no-captcha.html - Plesner, Vontobel, Wattenhofer, Breaking reCAPTCHAv2 (ETH Zurich, 2024): https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08831 3D animation by FunNotSoFun, not real footage. #shorts #facts #technology