Source URL: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/a-2023-study-concluded-captchas-are-a-tracking-cookie-farm-for-profit-masquerading-as-a-security-service-that-made-us-spend-819-billion-hours-clicking-on-traffic-lights-to-generate-nearly-usd1-trillion-for-google/
Source: Hacker News
Title: CAPTCHAs: ‘a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service’
Feedly Summary: Comments
AI Summary and Description: Yes
Summary: The study from UC Irvine critically evaluates Google’s reCAPTCHA v2, highlighting its inefficacy in preventing bot traffic while raising significant privacy concerns. The findings indicate that reCAPTCHA primarily serves as a profitable tracking mechanism rather than a genuine security measure, challenging its ongoing use on the internet.
Detailed Description:
The 2023 study conducted by UC Irvine, titled “Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of reCAPTCHA v2,” presents several compelling insights regarding Google’s reCAPTCHA service, particularly its second version (v2). Here are the main points discussed in the study:
– **Ineffectiveness Against Bots**: The study concludes that CAPTCHAs do not effectively block bot traffic. In fact, bots are now reportedly outpacing humans in solving certain CAPTCHA formats.
– **Privacy Concerns**: The implementation of reCAPTCHA has introduced significant privacy risks due to the dependence on tracking cookies, which gather data on user behavior.
– **Time Consumption**: Users collectively spend vast amounts of time solving CAPTCHAs, leading to an estimated loss of 819 million hours, which translates to approximately $6.1 billion in terms of the US federal minimum wage.
– **Resource Consumption**:
– An estimated 134 Petabytes of internet bandwidth is consumed by CAPTCHA usage.
– The requirement has also led to 7.5 million kWh of energy consumption, resulting in substantial CO2 emissions (7.5 million pounds).
– **Economic Value of Data**:
– The study calculates that the full reCAPTCHA v2 dataset could be valued between $8.75 billion and $32.3 billion and that tracking cookies could have a total lifetime value of approximately $888 billion based on data accumulation from 2010 to 2023.
– **Conclusion on Purpose**: The researchers assert that the primary function of reCAPTCHA v2 is to serve as a “tracking cookie farm,” disguised as a security feature, thus questioning its ongoing relevance and integrity in protecting users and their privacy. They argue that this system should be deprecated in favor of alternatives that genuinely contribute to security online.
This study has critical implications for professionals in the fields of privacy, information security, and compliance, as it underscores the importance of evaluating widely used technologies for their genuine effectiveness and the safeguarding of user data. The findings may prompt organizations to reconsider their reliance on reCAPTCHA and to explore more effective and privacy-conscious alternatives.