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Please solve the CAPTCHA


Ionspy

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I like to have my Cookies deleted at the end of each Browser session, guess I am not the only one.

Because of that (I assume) every time I want to login to geocaching.com, currently I have to do one of those photo-CAPTCHAs. Very annoying.

I understand that CAPTCHAs may be required, but is there a technical possibility to avoid them repeating in a case like mine, usually sitting at the same PC from where I made the last successful login yesterday?

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1 hour ago, Ionspy said:

I understand that CAPTCHAs may be required, but is there a technical possibility to avoid them repeating in a case like mine, usually sitting at the same PC from where I made the last successful login yesterday?

Yes, it is technically possible to store all the information you need, for example, from where you last logged in, by using cookies. I have never seen CAPTCHAs when I log in, but practically,  because I am using cookies to store this information, I never need to log in at all. I was so curious now that I tried to log in by using anonymous browser, which is meant to be used when the user does not want to give or save any information about his visits. I managed to log in without a trace of any kind of CAPTCHAs. I must suspect that you have been personally selected to have this feature or your setup has something suspicious which gives cause to doubt that you are some kind of robot. :)

Edited by arisoft
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I'm like "longspy", I delete my cookies at the end of each browser session.  The CAPTCHA pictures on all three of my computers are small, fuzzy and not clear to see what I'm looking at (I do have a fancy dual computer screen on one of my computers).  Some pictures I can't tell what I'm looking at.  As a result, at a minimum I have to go through at least 6 CAPTCHA pictures sessions and on some days I just can't log in because after going through almost 20 of these picture sessions, I give up.  Geocaching's use of these particular CAPTCHA is awful.  I'm at the point that I hate having to log into their "dadgum" site.  I've sent messages to their "help", but they never respond.  I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong.  How come Google and others sites have migrated away from these annoying pictures and still been able to prove that I am not a "robot".  Geocaching is behind the times.  When people ask me about geocaching now, I don't encourage them anymore to try it for two reasons:  the cost and the annoying CAPTCHA pictures.  When Geocaching catches up to everyone else that has moved away from CAPTCHA, then I may start promoting again and that's assuming I haven't quit altogether.  Because logging on to geocaching.com is impossible for me some days.

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On 4/20/2018 at 3:21 PM, arisoft said:
On 4/20/2018 at 2:58 PM, GeoGatesHunter said:

I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong.

Try to avoid deleting cookies. It may help a lot.

I have to agree - this seems to be a self-imposed hardship.

On 4/20/2018 at 2:58 PM, GeoGatesHunter said:

When people ask me about geocaching now, I don't encourage them anymore to try it for two reasons:  the cost and the annoying CAPTCHA pictures.

I disagree.  The Geocaching app is free.  Basic membership is also free. 

We have found it convenient to maintain our premium membership since we started in 2007, but that is still only $30 US a year - $2.50 a month, or 8.2 cents a day.  Less than a tank of gas.  Certainly less than a decent bottle of scotch, and while both have their way of lowering my stress level, the geocaching membership definitely lasts longer than the bottle of scotch.

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Captchas are a necessary evil thanks to a popular but rogue phone app that robotically scrapes the website. Called "c:bad" or something like that.  Direct your anger in that direction, and if you know cachers using that app, try to convince them to use an authorized API partner app instead.  The latter are much gentler on the servers.

 

EDIT to clarify:  the captcha I'm thinking of is on the search page reached by the "all nearby caches" link on a cache page.  That's exactly where I'd focus my attention if I was writing a c:bad-type app.

 

Edited by Viajero Perdido
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35 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

Captchas are a necessary evil thanks to a popular but rogue phone app that robotically scrapes the website. Called "c:bad" or something like that. 

I don't think that's the reason for the captcha because as long as you accept the cookies and stay logged in you don't see the captcha, and I assume c:bad must do that because once you've logged in you don't have to keep logging in and don't see the captcha and c:bad "just works".

 

I suspect the captcha is there to stop bots signing up and logging in. If GS really did introduce the captcha because of c:bad then they did a woefully bad job.

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5 hours ago, pieter en ineke said:

I always delete cookies.

 

You can save the cookies before you delete them and then restore the saved cookies when you continue using the service.

 

You need to load  "Export cookies" extension to get this feature into your browser and get rid of captchas.

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8 minutes ago, Team Christiansen said:

Seems to me to be an outdated browser issue if all the elements of a webpage don't show.

 

Firefox 61.0.1 is the latest available and does not show captcha, it does show everything else. The same captcha works perfectly on the no-ip.org site.

It still annoys me that the checker automatically corrects he coordinates, it adds a few steps to "restore" to the original coordinates as I don't want to save any cache info on the website (and corrected coordinates are not flagged when importing PQs into GSAK).

 

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11 minutes ago, arisoft said:

 

Do you mean that a bot can not log in? Yes, they can, but bots can not hit the "I am not a robot" checkbox :)

 

 

I mean, there's a 10 try limit / time unit. Then the "I'm not a robot" gives you the tiles to chose from, sometimes more than once. That's overkill.

Tries/timeunit should be enough for logged in users.

 

The fact I have to use Chrome + the Captcha that's not happy with just clicking "I'm not a robot" + sometimes having me select tiles several times + automatically correcting coordinates so I have to manually restore them has made me trust my solutions more than with other checkers. If it looks good on the map, I don't bother anymore using it.

 

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26 minutes ago, on4bam said:

I mean, there's a 10 try limit / time unit. Then the "I'm not a robot" gives you the tiles to chose from, sometimes more than once. That's overkill.

Tries/timeunit should be enough for logged in users.

 

The idea of the captcha is to prevent using bots when the user is logged in. Reputable users need only to click the "I am not a robot" checkbox. If you see multi image captchas your reputation is not high enough for the single checkbox captcha. You should focus to gain your reputation somehow to make your life easier. The same captcha is used at many other places, geochecker is not the only one.

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1 hour ago, arisoft said:

The same captcha is used at many other places, geochecker is not the only one.

 

And yet it works as expected on no-ip.org but not on gc.. in the same browser go figure.

Fortunately most CO's are using 3rd party checkers.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Lightning11 said:

I may have to go through another browser, but I am not happy with a site that can't keep up with fixes.

We don't know if the problem is with the site or with something on your computer, so it's a bit early to start accusing them of not maintaining the website. What browser have you been trying (including what version)?

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I also am annoyed at geocaching.com because of the persistent and intrusive captchas.  I understand geocaching.com has contracted out the security of their site to the company that provides the captchas system of annoying customers.  Fuzzy pictures, constant repeats of scenarios sometimes taking upwards of 2 or more minutes to "prove" I'm not a robot.  Totally unnecessary as this is one of the few sites that requires this onerous task.  I don't delete my cookies btw.  The most onerous times to hammer a "customer" with these things is on the periodic check when using GSAK that geocaching.com requires so they can prove you are a premium member.  I used to think that being a premium member would help you use the site, not hinder you.  I agree with several posts here that accuse geocaching.com of being behind the times using this terrible piece of script to "protect" themselves.

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