I use Firefox and Firefox Mobile on the desktop and Android respectively, Chromium with Bromite patches on Android, and infrequently Brave on the desktop to get to sites that only work properly with Chromium (more and more often - another whole separate can of worms too, this…) And I always pay attention to disable google.com and gstatic.com in NoScript and uBlock Origin whenever possible.
I noticed something quite striking: when I hit sites that use those hateful captchas from Google - aka “reCAPTCHA” that I know are from Google because they force me to temporarily reenable google.com and gstatic.com - statistically, Google quite consistently marks the captcha as passed with the green checkmark without even asking me to identify fire hydrants or bicycles once, or perhaps once but the test passes even if I purposedly don’t select certain images, and almost never serves me those especially heinous “rolling captchas” that keep coming up with more and more images to identify or not as you click on them until it apparently has annoyed you enough and lets you through.
When I use Firefox however, the captchas never pass without at least one test, sometimes several in a row, and very often rolling captchas. And if I purposedly don’t select certain images for the sake of experimentation, the captchas keep on coming and coming and coming forever - and if I keep doing it long enough, they plain never stop and the site become impossible to access.
Only with Firefox. Never with Chromium-based browsers.
I’ve been experimenting with this informally for months now and it’s quite clear to me that Google has a dark pattern in place with its reCAPTCHA system to make Chrome and Chromium-based browsers the path of least resistance.
It’s really disgusting…
It’s not necessary targeted like that. Remember Chrome sends a lot of information about the user, allowing them to more easily gauge if it’s a bot. Firefox hides a lot of information, blocks a lot of third party scripts by default, and even sends fake information for some things. For all intents and purposes, Firefox looks much more like a bot than Chrome.
With that said, I use Firefox exclusively and don’t have anywhere near as many issues as you seem to.
Remember Chrome sends a lot of information about the user
Remember, I use the equivalent of Bromite on Android and Brave on the desktop. Those are not Chrome: they’re heavily privacy enhanced. By your theory, those browsers too should serve you more annoying reCAPTCHA more often, just like Firefox. But they don’t: even on those privacy-respecting Chromium forks, you can get past reCAPTCHA much easier.
I use Firefox exclusively and don’t have anywhere near as many issues as you seem to.
Try using Chromium side by side and the subtle extra difficulties of sailing through the Googlespace become quite apparent. As long as you stick to Firefox, you don’t realize that the Chromium experience is ever-so-slightly slicker on many websites.
Brave is a chromium based browser, so maybe chromium sends out something that let’s recaptcha know what’s going on.
maybe chromium sends out something that let’s recaptcha know what’s going on.
Maybe. But in that case, that’s not a great sign that Brave respects your privacy. But I wouldn’t put it past Brave: they too are a for-profit and I don’t quite trust them either.
However, the Bromite fork I run on my deGoogled phone almost certainly doesn’t make any privacy compromises and it solves reCAPTCHAs more easily than Firefox Mobile.
Any Web browser that claims privacy and security while using chromium as its base isn’t worth the risk, they may have implemented fixes and added their own proprietary code, but it’s still chromium and Google most likely hides a bunch of stuff from devs so they can’t mess with it.
it’s still chromium and Google most likely hides a bunch of stuff from devs so they can’t mess with it.
Chromium is open source.
It’s still made by Google, tho, so can you really trust that there’s no hidden shit? This is a company that is trying to create a monopoly over website access.
Bromite is not proprietary. But yeah, the chromium codebase is huge, it may be possible that certain bad parts were not found by the fork maintainer
They can, Vivaldi devs doing this since more than 7 Years, and other do the same even EDGE, which is certainly an privacy nightmare, by sendin a lot of stuff to M$ and a lot of other, even to TowerData, but to Google zero. Because of the continuos fails to try to control Chromium users, now Google try it with his apps and services and webpages which use these, introducing this WEI DRM crap for Webpages, which permits to block any browser if it don’t include the Google Token “to prove that it is a secure browser”. That affect all browsers equally, independent of the engine it use, even Firefox. That is, or add this Google Token or forget internet. The ring to rules them all. Or we all work together against this outrage, preventing Google from introducing this shit or game over for a lot of small browsers and forks in a future only with Chrome, EDGE and nothing more.
I know google sites (especially Google search) are a much more polished experience on Chrome, but I haven’t had an unusable experience on Firefox, I don’t notice a problem.
I think I missed that that isn’t your point. You’re saying google streamlines things for people on Chromium to make it a nicer experience, making it harder to switch away. And I think you’re right about that.
but I haven’t had an unusable experience on Firefox, I don’t notice a problem.
There are quite a few online web stores I patronize in which the shopping cart is broken, or the checkout is broken and there’s no way of paying in Firefox.
My bank’s online banking site is broken too in Firefox. It’s okay to pay for things and display basic checking account information, but more detailed personal finance pages are unusable.
My company’s ERP is half broken in Firefox.
And quite a few porn sites I download stuff off of are broken too in Firefox.
And that’s with NoScript, uBlock Origin and Ghostery fully disabled.
Obviously all those sites are streamlined to work well with Chromium or Chromium-based browser because - surprise surprise - it’s the most common browser type, which is exactly the position Google wanted to place itself in. It’s was very same problem when websites were designed to work primarily with Explorer, when Microsoft dominated the browser space many years ago.
This is not my experience. For the sites I frequent, though Firefox is generally not listed as a supported browser anymore, the sites work fine. That includes banking and any random shopping cart site. That’s probably because in my country there are common payment portals, and for you the common payment portals are probably different.
One site I have trouble with is one for health insurance, but a user agent spoofed to look like Chrome makes the site work fine (I hate so much that they do this, and have complained but I’m just one customer).
You’re most likely logged into the browser with your Google account in Chrome. I’m sure they take that into account as well.
Keep in mind that basic bots don’t render or process certain page elements - like javascript. So VPN plus noScript/uBlock plus obscured data plus no preexisting cookies and possibly unique fingerprint from all your previous interactions (depending on your privacy settings)… It all adds to possible bot behavior. In my mind, getting caprcha’d is a good thing. It may mean google has low confidence that it knows who I am.
In my mind, getting caprcha’d is a good thing. It may mean google has low confidence that it knows who I am.
That is possibly the most unique outlook I’ve read about today.
There’s nothing good about captchas: it’s an insult to human intelligence, it’s forced unpair labor and each time I get one, I want to murder someone.
In a normal world, your statement would be utterly insane. But in our dystopian surveillance economy society, it’s actually a rational and interesting point of view, and one that turns captchas into a useful indicator of how well you manage to evade said corporate surveillance.
Interesting. Thank you for that.
However, If you’re right and Googles serves fewer captchas to those they can track better and not just those who run Chromium as I suspect, it also means privacy-enhanced Chromium-based browsers don’t hold a candle to Firefox. That’s not great news considering Chromium is the new de-factor standard and some websites only work okay in Chromium.
My experience was that when solving captchas where you select pics on the grid and other pics load and replace the selected ones within the same round. in firefox it tends to play those fade-in fade-out very slowly. while on chrome they appear instantly.
Unfortunatly I can’t expand my obveservation just based on my own anecdotal experience. have you noticed the same behaviour ?
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- Sky Cato ( @skycat@beehaw.org ) English12•11 months ago
The thing that annoys me so much is why every damn website has to depend on gOoGle scripts to function. E.g : most of website depend on googleapis or ajax.googleapis. why don’t you just stop hotlinking everything to 3rd party shits. This is basically spread Google’s domination on web. Remember, those 3rd party libraries are not Free. They take visitors data and make you dependent on their services. So Google has become the gatekeeper of many websites.
I have a website and I coded everything by hands. No 3rd party JavaScript and other 3rd party BS. It makes my website run so damn fast
What you’re referring to is in fact Google Analytics which allows a lot of app to collect intrusive insights on their customers.
If you want to create an app today, you will use JS, Lemmy uses it, everyone uses it. It’s not dominated by Google, it’s just the standard for building web app today!
- Sky Cato ( @skycat@beehaw.org ) English2•11 months ago
I am not against JavaScript. I sometimes use JavaScript and I don’t see the wrongs in that. What I am concerned is why so many websites use 3rd party JavaScript. This is disgusting because you sell your visitors out. Besides you can’t control the content of 3rd party scripts and most of them sell your data and spy on you.
In the case of proprietary software yes, but using a CDN for delivering JavaScript is sometimes so useful for open-source.
I see what you’re saying with Sentry, Google Analytics, etc… And it’s laughably hard to escape the influence of big tech in programming today, you are right!
At least when you want to build an app as we know them know… I’m currently working with some other folks on making the web more decentralized through a database that shares his data across peers.
Those peers are the user of the app. Let me tell you, the seeds are planted… just need to grow the tree!
- Sky Cato ( @skycat@beehaw.org ) English3•11 months ago
Are you talking about IPFS?
No I’m talking about https://gun.eco — and it’s really interoperable because you could backup the DB files inside IPFS. If you need another lay of decentralisation lol.
Join us! Maybe you’ll like it here!
That’s weird, I use Waterfox and I occasionally get to do some kind of “puzzle”, but other times I just need to click the reCaptcha and it will confirm itself (with the green check)
Ironically, when I use Vivaldi, the captcha doesn’t even load, and when it loads, it says it’s wrong regardless of the answer I give it, so I’m always locked and that’s quite literally the only reason I stopped using Vivaldi.
On Edge I need to fill in puzzles ALL THE TIME, that’s also why I stopped using Edge (apart from the bloatware and the uBlock not working there)
Do you use a VPN by chance? I get really annoying CAPTCHAs with my VPN on.
Google doesn’t like things that make the user less identifiable, so they strike back however they can without it being too obvious.
No VPN. I hit those websites from work or from my work cellphone.
Google doesn’t like things that make the user less identifiable, so they strike back however they can without it being too obvious.
I reckon so too.
And also, I believe they coax people into adopting Chrome or Chromium-based browsers by making alternatives harder or more annoying to use, so that the browser landscape eventually becomes a monoculture they can control. Once Gecko-based browsers are finally extinct, they’ll go after the Chromium forks.
I have to do a captcha on basically every cloudflare site with my VPN on.
Side note - Firefox for Android recently freezes and crashes when you use the Google search in the private view. Also seems intentional
Private mode is useless, change my mind
Jeez, just faced the forever recaptcha a couple of days back. I used Firefox web and the recaptcha was a sold 5+ kinds (select cars, buses, motorcycle, signals…). I kinda half thought that it was some sort of gag after seeing it go on for what seemed like forever. Thankfully I made it through and it will not change my decision to stick with Firefox.
Wish we had some extension which could skip these CAPTCHA shits. I normally surf on mull (forked Firefox) though sometime have to use cromite (fork of bromite which is a fork of chromium) to access websites peacefully.
I read that the “level of annoyance” (phrasing mine) has to do with your score (i.e. how likely Google thinks you are a bot). And I wouldn’t be surprised if using any browser other than ones in their ecosystem reduces your score more.
Anyway, there are other captcha systems websites could use but choose not to.
there are other captcha systems websites could use but choose not to.
You hit the nail on the head: Google has made itself the de-facto default for many web services, so that it takes extra effort to go with a privacy-friendly alternative. That’s what makes Google so dangerous: it’s their customers who make them unavoidable, be it for reCAPTCHA, fonts, basic Javascript, login, analytics, maps… the list is endless.
Re: rolling captchas, I’ve noticed that when I select one wrong image in addition to or excluing one of their right images, I don’t get rolling captchas. Maybe it a fluke, but its happened times that its become regular practice.
Oh, you said your blocking google.com and gstatic.com? Try privacy badger, Google uses a million other domains to track as well (Google Fonts for example) and privacy badger will let you find and block those kinds from domains from tracking or at least from leaving cookies if they are required for the site to work.