Just today, you may have been forced to squint at a jumble of hard-to-read letters and numbers to prove you weren’t a robot in order to log into a website.
That security feature, called CAPTCHA, has been frustrating Internet users for more than a decade—and it’s not even all that great at weeding out real humans from automated spam scripts, according to Google. So the search giant has unveiled a new login security measure dubbed “No CAPTCHA” that it claims is both simpler for humans and better at warding off bots.
Here’s how it works: Instead of typing in obtuse strings of text, users will simply have to check a box asserting that they’re not robots. A risk analysis algorithm will evaluate the way the user interacts with the web page to determine if he’s a person or a bot. For most people, the checkmark is all that will be required. If the algorithm isn’t sure, a user may be forced to type in the character string the old-fashioned way.
Google says that artificial intelligence can now solve the traditional distorted text fields with 99.8% accuracy, so a new method was needed.
Google is also working to make CAPTCHAs more bearable on mobile devices. Users will start being asked to match similar images in a grid instead of typing in text.
Some big names like Snapchat and WordPress have already implemented No CAPTCHA, and Google says the feature is helping users to log in faster.
The Leadership Brief. Conversations with the most influential leaders in business and tech.
