Most of us are familiar, often to our frustration, with CAPTCHA systems that ask us time and time again to prove our existence as human beings before we’re allowed to interact with some online service. Over the years, folks have voiced their frustrations about these unavoidable puzzles, tasking us with clicking on endless traffic signal and spot-the-bus pop-ups. Salvation may soon be within reach, because now, Google Chrome is working on a solution to seriously reduce the need for those pesky CAPTCHAs.
Google has long been interested in solving the humans-needing-to-prove-they’re-humans problem in ways that are both less annoying to us, while still providing defense against spammy bots. We’ve seen the companyimplement solutionslike ReCAPTCHA V2, which replaced those squiggly word boxes with simple checks — and then by making the checkboxes invisible.
But now, the company is taking further steps as Chrome develops anauto-verify feature. When the setting is turned on, a site you’ve already proven your humanity to will save a cookie-like proof of that test. Other sites can then check on this proof when making their own determination about your bot-status — without needing to see your browser history — and verify with Chrome that you’re indeed human.
Frequent tipster@Leopeva64spotted the feature, which is currently only available for testing on Chrome Canary’s desktop version.
First introduced in February, the auto-verify feature — which Chrome developers seem to be calling Anti-Abuse — is currently available testing. If you’re on Canary and feeling curious, navigate toSettings→Privacy and security→Site settings→Additional content settings→Auto-verify, and give it a try.
