When browsing the internet without captcha proxies, you must have come across captchas before. They are the tests you are given to prove you are a human and not a robot. You’ll have dealt with them when trying to login, access web pages, and just generally browsing the web.
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Captchas can be irritating, and they can even disrupt research that organizations are doing digitally. We are writing this article to tell you about captchas, why they are used, how to avoid captchas, how to stop captchas, and more.
What Is A Captcha?
Captchas are quick online tests designed to find and stop bots that are trying to access a website. They are sometimes called reCAPTCHAs. CAPTCHA is an abbreviation for ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’. They are a simple challenge for humans to pass, but bots (computer programs) have a hard time getting past them.
Different Types Of Captchas
There are different types of captchas that are used to stop bots and you must have encountered most of them by now, if not all of them. They give different types of challenges that need to be passed before you are given access to the website you are visiting.
Letter recognition
This captcha will show you a group of letters and numbers that are indistinct. You will then be asked to type the correct numbers and letters in the right order. You can usually change the combination of letters and numbers if you are having trouble.
Time-based checks
This captcha tracks the amount of time that a visitor of the website spends filling in a form. If the amount of time is short, then the captcha will think you are a bot. Bots usually copy and paste the information instantly. Humans take more time filling out the form before they complete it. If the form is filled in quickly, then the captcha will reject access to the website.
Math problem
You will be shown a simple math problem that you will need to solve. Bots can have a hard time understanding what they need to do and fail the test. Humans will not have any trouble solving this captcha.
Image recognition
Pictures will be shown on the screen, and you will be asked to click the images that fit into the category that is specified. Bots have trouble identifying what each image is and if it fits into the category. This stops bots from accessing the website and humans have no trouble completing this test.
Invisible captchas
These captchas are not seen by people when they are browsing the web. Invisible captchas are honeypots. Only bots will find and interact with them, and when this happens, they are blocked as they report themselves as a bot. This type of captcha is placed and is hidden inside a web page’s code.
Social media access
This captcha requires a person to have a social media login. You will not see these captchas as often as the others, as they are frustrating, and most people don’t want to give away this information. They ask you to login to your social media account to prove you are not a bot.
Why Do Websites Use Captchas?
There are many reasons why websites use captchas. Let’s look at what the common reasons are and the benefits they have.
- Stop cybercriminals from spamming blogs and forums with links and comments.
- To help make the website secure and protect visitors’ information.
- Prevent hackers from creating many accounts they will use for terrible reasons.
- Stopping brute force attacks that hackers use to access the website and its visitor’s accounts and information.
Can Bots Beat Captcha?
There are some bots that can beat captchas. Bots can be created that can solve the challenges that captchas ask to be completed. Some cybercriminals can use click farms to brute force their way through the captcha. Clicks farms involve thousands of low-paid workers who solve captchas for bots.
Can bots beat captcha? Some of them can. Captchas do not guarantee that all bots will be stopped from accessing the website.
Strategies For Beating Captcha (Two Main Methods)
How to beat captcha
There is software online that people can use that will recognize the captcha being used by a website and then solve it for you. These websites are powered by humans, so the captcha that needs to be solved will be sent to the software, someone will then solve the captcha, and then the answer will be delivered to the customer of the service. This happens in seconds.
You can use Bypass bots that can be downloaded as browser extensions which will solve the captchas for you. They are not always 100% correct, but they will get you through many captchas.
How To Avoid Captcha
If you want to avoid captchas when you are browsing the internet, then you need to use captcha proxies.
What Is a Proxy?
A proxy acts as a gateway between the website you visit and you. It is an intermediary server that retrieves data from the internet for you, instead of the data being sent directly to you. It protects you when you are connected to the internet.
Use Cases For Proxies
You can use them to gather data
Proxies can collect data in real-time. This data is usually analyzed to find patterns that can be used to benefit companies when they make decisions. Proxies make collecting this type of data easier.
Search engine monitoring
Companies and people use proxies to monitor search engines and track trends and keywords that people are searching for. They use this data to make better decisions and improve their SEO and company performance.
How A Captcha Proxy Can Help You
Your IP address is the reason a website can identify you and give you a captcha. By using captcha proxies, you can hide your IP address and avoid this from happening. These types of proxies were created to help you avoid captchas.
Rotating proxies
If you want to avoid captchas, then you should use rotating proxies. This type of proxy will change your IP address, so captchas won’t be shown to you. Captchas identify bots that visit the website from the same IP address, so a rotating proxy will stop this.
A rotating residential proxy will likely stop captchas from being shown. The captcha will think that the website is being accessed by people.
Randomize scraper behavior
You can make your scraper bot behave more human-like. This could help you avoid proxies completely. You can do this by making the time the scraper bot spends on a web page longer. Randomize this time, it shouldn’t be the same all the time.
Check for honeypots
Honeypot captchas are hidden in the web page’s code and can block a bot from accessing the website. Your bot should check the CSS elements in the web page’s code for visibility and display before it starts interacting with it.
The visibility should be on, and the display should be ‘appear’ and not ‘hidden’. If it’s ‘hidden’, then it is likely a honeypot that will get your bot blocked.
Conclusion
If you’re asking yourself, why am I getting captcha on every site? Then you should use a captcha proxy. These help to avoid captcha and easily scrape public information from websites using your scraper bot. There are different types of proxies that you can use, and they will help you stop getting frustrated when trying to visit websites.