Is the cloudflare captcha really necessary?

[Nyaa]

I keep hitting an intermediate "Are you human" page every 5 minutes or so despite being signed in to my account.
It is a great frustration to be stalled for several seconds every time I click the next chapter button.

 

[Zakuro]

I keep hitting an intermediate "Are you human" page every 5 minutes or so despite being signed in to my account.

Same. I am starting to doubt my humanity.

 

[Lorelliad]

You're a cat, it knows

 

[AliceShiki]

Tony sometimes has to up the level of protection of Cloudflare due to bot attacks.

It's not really something he likes doing, but a necessity at times.

He'll probably tune it down later, when he feels like the attacks died down, but he may need to turn it up again if they go up again.

It's just a necessary evil at times.

 

[Tempokai]

The solution is simple: be a human. I only see it when I change from wifi to mobile connection.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

Starting a week ago I’ve seen the same captcha used on a bunch of websites that didn’t have it before. Makes me think there was some kind of update. If not, doesn’t really matter only takes a second and increases security.

 

[Nyaa]

Tony sometimes has to up the level of protection of Cloudflare due to bot attacks.
It's not really something he likes doing, but a necessity at times.
He'll probably tune it down later, when he feels like the attacks died down, but he may need to turn it up again if they go up again.
It's just a necessary evil at times.

Ideally, it should be disabled for users with old accounts, so that it can catch new bots while leaving us loyal users and known humans alone.

If not, doesn’t really matter only takes a second and increases security.

It's not just a second. It's usually several seconds and often also an additional click. Worse still on slow internet like airplane WiFi.
Also unnecessary to enforce against known users. A more targeted approach would be more appreciated.

You're a cat, it knows

Cats are people too. #catlivesmatter (all 9 of them)

 

[AliceShiki]

Ideally, it should be disabled for users with old accounts, so that it can catch new bots while leaving us loyal users and known humans alone.

I don't know if Cloudflare has this kind of pretty setting that is easily customizable by the site owner.

I think it doesn't, but I'm not exactly an expert on Cloudflare..

 

[Anon2024]

Politicians/corporations are using bots to infiltrate every website to control information. Usually during times where they’re doing something bad.

If the world gets better then the bots might stop.

 

[Piisfun]

Ideally, it should be disabled for users with old accounts, so that it can catch new bots while leaving us loyal users and known humans alone.

Not possible.

Cloudflare is a third-party service. It has no understanding of local user accounts. All it knows is the connection data (IP, MAC, etc...) and a bunch of techniques for detecting bots.

"A more targeted approach" wouldn't have the global reach needed to combat bots, nor the server capacity to shrug off massive attacks, nor a team of human specialists to back it up when things go really, really wrong.

 

[Kenjona]

While it is annoying, especially in a place with spotty service, if it is necessary. I will survive it, at least it is not dial up, when your service drops after every page.

Or when someone picks up the phone, or dials into your phone at the wrong moment. Sad thing is even though this video is only 30 seconds long the actual dial up could be 3-5 minutes; or more.

 

[Empyrea]

I don't see an issue with it myself, but I can see it being a little annoying for some people. Definitely worth it though if it keeps the site healthy and up.

 

[J_Chemist]

It's kept a bot site from stealing my novel. I like it. In exchange for having to click a single button, the additional protection is a treat.

 

[Tony]

I keep hitting an intermediate "Are you human" page every 5 minutes or so despite being signed in to my account.
It is a great frustration to be stalled for several seconds every time I click the next chapter button.

Are you still getting it every 5 minutes? If so, which browser are you using?

Sorry but it has to stay on as SH has been filled with a lot bots recently which has slowed down the site quite a bit at times.

 

[Oreo]

Politicians/corporations are using bots to infiltrate every website to control information. Usually during times where they’re doing something bad.

If the world gets better then the bots might stop.

They aren't the only one using bots tbh. Some authors use bots and clone accounts to increase their stories statistics in this site. I don't see them in trending anymore since the Cloudflare update.

Sorry but it has to stay on as SH has been filled with a lot bots recently which has slowed down the site quite a bit at times.

Keep it up! I am a human person so I have no complains.

I don't know how a single "I am human" button keeps the bot away but it's actually working. Are the bots starting to develop a conscience like Bing chat bot and is self-aware of their lack of humanity?

 

[Piisfun]

I don't know how a single "I am human" button keeps the bot away but it's actually working. Are the bots starting to develop a conscience like Bing chat bot and is self-aware of their lack of humanity?

It is actually a lot more complex than that.
Before you ever see that box, it analyzes your network traffic for certain patterns that might indicate you are a bot. If it spots them, it forces a full captcha.

When you move your mouse to click the box, it checks how your cursor moves. When bots do this, it tends to teleport or move in very straight lines, whereas human movements will always deviate slightly from the course.
Failing this will also trigger a full captcha.

So basically, they are using methods that try to minimize the amount of annoyance.

 

[melchi]

They are prob like this guy.

 

[proxybaba]

with technologies like CHatGPT, it is getting hard to differentiate bots, so yeah as a developer I know its annoying but its necessary

 

[Serkadion]

It's EXTREMELY poorly implemented. I'm an IT consultant, which means I'm VERY mobile. I can switch internet connections 30 times in a day, easily. Lately, it seems like every time I turn around, there's this excessively long Cloudflare ARE YOU A HUMAN going after me. I've seen it twice today, so far, and I just left home 30 minutes ago. Yesterday it did it to me as I changed wireless access points, on the same network.

How is it poorly implemented? My computer has the same mac address -every time-. The browser (Firefox on Lubuntu) fingerprint is the same -every time-. Cloudflare doesn't give a crap about actually cross referencing. Weirdly enough, even though other sites I visit regularly are under constant attack and use cloudflare, I'm not getting any "You have to be a bot. Confess!" messages from there.

 

[Piisfun]

It's EXTREMELY poorly implemented. I'm an IT consultant, which means I'm VERY mobile. I can switch internet connections 30 times in a day, easily. Lately, it seems like every time I turn around, there's this excessively long Cloudflare ARE YOU A HUMAN going after me. I've seen it twice today, so far, and I just left home 30 minutes ago. Yesterday it did it to me as I changed wireless access points, on the same network.

How is it poorly implemented? My computer has the same mac address -every time-. The browser (Firefox on Lubuntu) fingerprint is the same -every time-. Cloudflare doesn't give a crap about actually cross referencing. Weirdly enough, even though other sites I visit regularly are under constant attack and use cloudflare, I'm not getting any "You have to be a bot. Confess!" messages from there.

That's a Cloudflare problem, not a Scribble Hub problem. All that can be done locally is turning up or down the level of scrutiny.

Though, if you happen to be using a VPN, I would recommend changing the VPN endpoint and see if that helps. Some of them seem to get huge amounts of bot traffic, like Mozilla VPN's Chicago endpoint. Heck, I couldn't connect through there without getting a captcha just trying to run a Google search.