Recaptcha logo/banner on bottom right of Geekzone

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#2040654 19-Jun-2018 17:32

My comments were not directed at yourself but a reflection on the behaviour I see every day. A lot of complaining for things small, lack of empathy, self-entitlement, etc.

I see this when people complain about ads, about captcha, about being brought back on topic, about having to click a captcha to login, about rich text editor not doing hyperlink, about rich text editor doing hyperlink.

My point is we serve more than 200,000 visitors a month, millions of pages every month. We cannot accommodate everyone so we do what I want. That's why the BDFL on my account.

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#2040665 19-Jun-2018 17:39

Rikkitic:

I can understand the frustration being expressed here. It is a valid point. But I don't understand why I was singled out. About a dozen people commented ("complained") about this. My only comment was a constructive suggestion that maybe the image could be replaced with a tiny one. After the image was removed, someone commented on that and I replied with "yay". That was the sum total of my comments until I got dragged into a discussion of why I objected to it.

The image does in fact partially obscure my scroll bar at the bottom on my notebook. It doesn't completely cover it but I found it distracting. It wasn't end of the world I can't live with it distracting, just gee I wish that wasn't there distracting. So I commented. I wasn't flaming anyone, just explaining why the image bothered me. Surely that is allowed?

Actually @Rikkitic, I didn't single you out. All I did was offer ways to scroll, due your comment on the icon inhibiting your ability to scroll. I offered a suggestion, nothing more. Nothing else was said until you decided to make something of it, which I took exception to.

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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gehenna

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#2040668 19-Jun-2018 17:42

Stu:

Actually @Rikkitic, I didn't single you out. All I did was offer ways to scroll, due your comment on the icon inhibiting your ability to scroll. I offered a suggestion, nothing more. Nothing else was said until you decided to make something of it, which I took exception to.

Probably time for everyone to let it go at this point.

Stu

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#2040671 19-Jun-2018 17:53

Just clearing the point. I'm out.

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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Rikkitic

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#2040672 19-Jun-2018 17:56

More than happy to let it go. It grew bigger than warranted. Also out.

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Rikkitic

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#2040694 19-Jun-2018 19:06

I feel bad about the tangent this thread took and just want to add that I do very much appreciate all the hard work people do to make Geekzone the uniquely valuable resource it is. There is no other site quite like this one and the moderators, especially @freitasm, have somehow found the perfect balance between freedom and control to keep things exciting but reasonable in the political threads.

I have previously expressed my appreciation for the expert voluntary assistance provided by many of the members here, but it goes without saying (maybe it shouldn't) that that also extends to the moderators, without whom Geekzone could not exist. So thanks very much to you all, and sincere apologies if I took that for granted. My life would be far less interesting without Geekzone in it.

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kiwiharry

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#2040745 19-Jun-2018 20:25

As the original poster of this thread, I didn't think it would turn into a complaints thread.

I saw something different on the Geekzone website and it wasn't something I'd seen anywhere else, so wasn't too sure if it was somehow isolated to my PC, hence my post.

Once it was pointed out that it was there by design I accepted it. I agree that @freitasm is the BDFL and he is allowed to run the site how he see's fit.

For over 16 years now I've also voluntered my time and energy for services related to the industry I work in and at times it is hard work and is often unappreciated, so I fully respect the work that the moderators do here.

I understand that the recaptcha service is developed by Google. Shame that this logo somehow can't be incorporated into the URL bar so it sits in the same area as or alongside the padlock icon for secure sites, but then again I know pretty much nothing about web design/services, so I could be talking utter rubbish.

Cheers

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Kyanar

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#2041860 21-Jun-2018 17:42

freitasm:

Not everything is permanent - results for a week show we might not need something like this for now.

However, I don't understand the hate. It's out of the way, the badge small and only existed to let people know the page had an automatic recaptcha. The benefits are measurable: we can identify bad actions while they're happening, so the results out be less spam, trolls, etc.

Personally, I'm not against the concept, nor even specifically the logo itself (though the placement perhaps wasn't ideal, maybe it could have been placed as a static object down beside the credits block for the hosting and design?) - I'm not fond of Google though, we know that they track a ton of data - in my opinion far too much - and I don't like the idea of them tracking in such depth as to know where I'm clicking on web pages. I do understand that it's a free service though, and you can't afford to expend too much on services like it. Maybe have it not included for subscribers (since people aren't likely to want to pay money to do the wrong thing, and once they pay you money you have a bit more of a trail back to anyone who does).

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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#2220679 18-Apr-2019 15:47

I have reinstated the ReCaptcha v3, this time making it invisible. As part of the T&Cs this needs to be communicated so instead of having the badge showing on the page (as per OP) I have now a message at the bottom of every page.

I will repeat a previous post for clarity...

Here is what it does: we used previous reCAPTCHA versions in the registration and contact pages. Those need direct interaction with the user - as in you have to check the box and if for any reason there's a suspicion you are not a human then some puzzle.

The new version does not need interaction. It monitors all activities on the site - hence it can be put in all pages. It does not directly link one visitor to the activities (as this is not allowed in the TOS anyway) but allows us to have an idea of what is going on. Also, any forms in the site automatically have a Google reCAPTCHA - even posting in the forums, PMs, etc.

Why I'm doing this? Because I'm trying to see what's the frequency of bots and bad actors on the site.

You may notice the incidence of spam is pretty low on Geekzone. That's because we have great moderators, which are supported by some automated tools and routines that slowly catch up and remove spam (or prevent spam).

This reCaptcha is just another tool for that. Instead of returning a "YES/NO" result for the question "Is this activity driven by a robot?" the new version looks at all activities around the site and returns a score from 0 to 1. If we see a new user with a score of 0.1 then we know something is not good here. If we see an old user with a score 0.1 then perhaps someone used a password leaked somewhere else to login. If we see a new user with a solid 1 then we are pretty much safe.

We already use Cloudflare settings to block most robots activities. But something always go through. As it is, since this went live, about 2% of the activities around the site would be questionable. This is a good number - I wouldn't want anything higher than this. But we have to keep a lid on it.

Currently it reports activities around the site through an Admin Dashboard but only a few forms are checked for robots - when someone is creating a new user, someone is sending us a message via our contact page or if a user sends a PM to another user.

Once we establish a baseline I will add this to the login page as well. Some may remember we used a service before (which is now retired since being acquired by another company) to identify compromised logins. The idea is to do the same with reCAPTCHA v3 and if something suspicious happens then lock the account until the owner can contact us (one way to prevent this will be by using 2FA in your account folks).

What you will notice is that some submit buttons are now disabled by default and only enabled once the reCAPTCHA is solved. This usually is a fraction of a second after a page is loaded. I am also planning to use this feature to prevent double posting in our forums (sometimes people click the "POST REPLY" quite a few times by mistake and having the reCAPTCHA will allow us to track these events).

Kyanar:

Personally, I'm not against the concept, nor even specifically the logo itself (though the placement perhaps wasn't ideal, maybe it could have been placed as a static object down beside the credits block for the hosting and design?) - I'm not fond of Google though, we know that they track a ton of data - in my opinion far too much - and I don't like the idea of them tracking in such depth as to know where I'm clicking on web pages. I do understand that it's a free service though, and you can't afford to expend too much on services like it. Maybe have it not included for subscribers (since people aren't likely to want to pay money to do the wrong thing, and once they pay you money you have a bit more of a trail back to anyone who does).

We include this for all pageview, subscribers or not because at some point we want to be able to identify compromised accounts - and subscribers aren't immune to this.

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gzt

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#2220858 18-Apr-2019 20:37

Test. Chrome 74 beta android mobile 9.

gzt

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#2220863 18-Apr-2019 20:50

Posting from the Gmail android app webview doesn't work for me using Chrome 74 beta as the webview.

It's possible it is using the more conservative settings in my standard chrome browser.

Can anyone else post from the android Gmail app on a device originally manufactured with 9?

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freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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#2220867 18-Apr-2019 20:59

I have tested on Android with Chrome 73, Opera 51 (the browser I recommend on this platform) and Huawei Browser 9.10 - all worked fine for posting, send PMs and more.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#2220873 18-Apr-2019 21:36

I've put together a simple reCAPTCHA test page so you folks can see what happens in the background...

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Rikkitic

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#2226195 27-Apr-2019 11:54

I just experienced my first reCAPTCHA issue. Up until now I haven't noticed it at all but when I just tried to post a private message, I got an error that the message had been blocked because I had an ad blocker enabled and hadn't played the CAPTCHA game (though no images were visible). However, when I tried posting a second time, it worked normally. No complaints, just mentioning this for the sake of information.

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#2226199 27-Apr-2019 12:02

Thanks. It could be that the Google reCAPTHCA service didn't reply in a timely manner.

For what's worth here is the current score distribution per page type. Google deems "suspicious" anything that goes below 0.5. For all effects I am tending to consider "suspicious" anything below 0.3. This means I can later do actions such as "If a login attempt has a score of less than 0.3 then lock the account and send email to confirm/unlock it".

We are currently gathering data for at least a month before I decide on how to use this data.

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