reCAPTCHA: 819 Million Hours of Wasted Human Time and Billions of Dollars in Google Profits

Andrew Searles earned his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Irvine in August 2024. A paper he coauthored with Renascence Prapty and Professor Gene Tsudik, “Dazed & Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of reCAPTCHAv2,” found that Google’s widely-used CAPTCHA system is primarily a mechanism for tracking user behavior and collecting data while providing little actual security against bots. The study revealed that reCAPTCHA extensively monitors users’ cookies, browsing history, and browser environment … all of which can be used for advertising and tracking purposes.

Learn more in an article published by Boing Boing.