TPE WebTis site - captcha on iPhone

[trainophile]

https://tickets.tpexpress.co.uk/tpe/en/journeyplanning/mixingdeck

Thanks to whoever posted the link a while ago to enable ticket booking the old fashioned way.

However is it just me, or does everyone logging into their account on there via an iPhone have to faff around with those captchas (e.g. click on all the boxes containing a vehicle)? They are not clear and often ambiguous, and having already entered my account password it seems totally unnecessary.

Never had this until recently, and it doesn’t happen on a Mac, so what’s the point?

 

[Clip]

capcha is used to prove the user is human and not a bot and they may just be trying it out on mobile first as thats they way the world is going

 

[Deafdoggie]

Companies know when they are getting phishing attempts on their website, and will respond. Capcha, whilst a faff, does stop these. It could be they are trialling it, it could be the mobile site was particularly susceptible. You can, of course, use the desktop site on your mobile, but it doesn't always fit or work as well.

Don't be alarmed, Phishing attacks are fairly common but anything companies can do to reduce it has to be good

 

[Bantamzen]

As above, capcha is being used more frequently to spot phishing attacks. The alternative would be for users to have a username & password for the opening log-in, with a secondary pass-phrase where the site would ask for 3-4 characters from it using drop-down menus. Either way, it basically prompts some form of actual clicking and/or responding to visual stimulus as opposed to simply filling in fields which can be easily automated.

 

[pemma]

If you're using your mobile data connection you might be on an IP address which someone else has recently used. I find all the time when I go to Wikipedia on a mobile data connection that messages pop up about nonconstructive edits on pages which I've never even visited, never mind edited.

What is quite stupid is often a captcha tickbox is now usually sufficient if you have JavaScript enabled but most websites use the old method which makes you read a code on an image and type it in.

 

[trainophile]

Thanks all. Just have to live with it then, and avoid making bookings when I’m on the move.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you're using your mobile data connection you might be on an IP address which someone else has recently used. I find all the time when I go to Wikipedia on a mobile data connection that messages pop up about nonconstructive edits on pages which I've never even visited, never mind edited.

What is quite stupid is often a captcha tickbox is now usually sufficient if you have JavaScript enabled but most websites use the old method which makes you read a code on an image and type it in.

The tick box is quite clever, it checks if you're a machine by seeing how consistently your mouse pointer moves when hovering over the box before clicking, and whether the position of the click is consistent.

 

[trainophile]

The thing that they don’t seem to have taken into account is that phone screens are quite small and the pictures they put up are not very easy to make out. It would be better if they had say boxes with numerals and asked for all the evens or all the odds. Trying to make out whether a dark blurred square is a shop front is not at all easy.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Companies know when they are getting phishing attempts on their website, and will respond. Capcha, whilst a faff, does stop these.

Royal Mail use a Captcha on their Track and Trace website which kicks in after a certain number of searches which is triggered by an algorithm that combines how many searches you are making and how quickly with how busy the site is in general. By their own admission they use it to reduce the volume of searches being made...

 

[danm14]

The thing that they don’t seem to have taken into account is that phone screens are quite small and the pictures they put up are not very easy to make out. It would be better if they had say boxes with numerals and asked for all the evens or all the odds. Trying to make out whether a dark blurred square is a shop front is not at all easy.

Those type of CAPTCHA (reCAPTCHA) are provided by Google. Unfortunately "selecting the odds and evens" would be of no benefit to Google. Supposedly the results are being used to improve the algorithms for their self driving cars. That's why so many of them involve selecting driving-related things.

These were designed to force hundreds of millions of users to improve their algorithms, I'd hazard a guess that whether they're easy to use or not isn't of much concern to Google.

The previous reCAPTCHA challenges (entering two words, and selecting building numbers) were being used to transcribe documents, and to improve building numbers on Google Maps respectively.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Royal Mail use a Captcha on their Track and Trace website which kicks in after a certain number of searches which is triggered by an algorithm that combines how many searches you are making and how quickly with how busy the site is in general. By their own admission they use it to reduce the volume of searches being made...

Indeed, you can pay for their service, which is, of course, their ideal!

 

[pemma]

The tick box is quite clever, it checks if you're a machine by seeing how consistently your mouse pointer moves when hovering over the box before clicking, and whether the position of the click is consistent.

The thing that they don’t seem to have taken into account is that phone screens are quite small and the pictures they put up are not very easy to make out. It would be better if they had say boxes with numerals and asked for all the evens or all the odds. Trying to make out whether a dark blurred square is a shop front is not at all easy.

Those type of CAPTCHA (reCAPTCHA) are provided by Google. Unfortunately "selecting the odds and evens" would be of no benefit to Google. Supposedly the results are being used to improve the algorithms for their self driving cars. That's why so many of them involve selecting driving-related things.

When I referred to a tick box alternative I was not meaning one of those which might ask to you find cars in pictures or similar afterwards, I was meaning a normal tickbox programmed in a way which means scripts can't see it but anyone with JavaScript enabled can, meaning there's no need for a 'challenge' to ever appear.