Photo of Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human - they prove you're American

· 75 comments · 250 words · Viewed ~24,323 times.

When I was a small child, I took an IQ test. One of the first questions I stumbled on was "A piece of candy costs 25¢. Jonny has a dime. How many nickels does he need to buy the candy?"

My 7-year old brain popped. WTAF is a nickel? Or a dime for that matter? We don't have those coins in my country! We don't spend in ¢ either. There was no way to get around the cultural knowledge required by the test. There were several questions like that - all assuming the test maker and taker were from a cultural homogeneity.

A few days ago, I had to complete a CAPTCHA. One of those irritating little web tests which is supposed to prove that you are a human. Here's what I got:

A grid of images, some of them have photos of American taxis, some have photos of trees.

Guess what, Google? Taxis in my country are generally black. I've watched enough movies to know that all of the ones in America are yellow. But in every other country I've visited, taxis have been a mish-mash of different hues.

This annoys me. Will Google's self driving cars simply not recognise London's Black Cabs? Will any yellow car in the UK be classified as a taxi by the infallible algorithm? Will Google refuse to believe I'm human simply because I don't know what a Twinkie is?

Before sticking a comment below, riddle me this - if something costs a half-a-crown, and you pay with a florin, how many tanners will you get in your change?

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75 thoughts on “CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human - they prove you're American”

  2. Alex Gibson says:

    I actually failed one of these recently. I gave up after 5 minutes of trying to identify parts of the photos containing street signs. The problem was scope: did they include the poles? tiny stranded corners? Informal signs? Having failed one, they seem to get fussier, and utterly fixated on street signs rather than throwing me an alternative challenge... I was forced to switch over to Internet Explorer (ugh!) and prove my humanity with an easier challenge...

    Reply

    1. Jon Ribbens says:

      Top tip: just use incognito mode in your favourite browser rather than switching to Internet Explorer.

      Reply

  3. Claudius Coenen says:

    In germany there used to be a “Groschen” (10 Pfennige or 1/10 of a Deutsche Mark). I would love to alienate both young people (who never experienced a currency discontinued in 2002) or anyone who never went to germany. Where can I start my own CAPTCHA-Service?

    Reply

    1. Jozef Chocholáček says:

      In the Czechia, they use term “pětka” (~fiver) for 10 crown (CZK) coin, not for the 5 crown coin – because in 1892(!), when the Austro-Hungarian empire adopted the gold standard and changed its currency from guldens to crowns, 10 crowns was of the same value as 5 guldens previously.

      Reply

      1. Dan Knauss says:

        No one knows what Czechia is either. Stick with Czech Republic!

        Reply

        2. Bryan Betts says:

          Czechia is fine, so's the Czech Republic, but please, not 'the Czechia'.
          Nice fiver story though. I wonder which Euro note will eventually take over the nickname?

          Reply

          1. Frederik says:

            Okay, just to annoy even more we in Albania have lek. Our currency changed value around 1960 so that 10 lek became 1.
            even now in 2020 people colloquially say 1000 for a 100 bill. Same with prices. Add this to the IQ test 🙂

            Reply

            1. Miłosz says:

              Same thing with Poland. Under soviet influence we had a currency with code PLZ (PoLish Zloty), but due to hyperinflation we needed a denomination so 10 000 PLZ became 1 PLN (PoLish New Zloty, it annoys me, I didn't know what 'N' stands for for a long time). There is a lot of common names for 1 000 000 PLZ/N (like "bańka") which now are used also for 100 PLN - depends how old you are.
              Apart from this there are many different names for 1 000 PLN like "patyk" (stick), "klocek" (brick), "kafel" (tile), "koło" (circle), but some people sometimes use these names for 100s, you just need to blend in the context.

              Reply

              1. Frederik says:

                Wow, I thought this was only an Albanian thing, I learnt now that same happened in Poland and Argentina (the other reply to my comment)
                My father uses to say that the state at the time should had made a mathematically complicated change so people had to learn the new value instead of using our weird way (100 new lek or 1000 old lek).
                Thanks for sharing!

                Reply

            2. Gonzalo says:

              Same in Argentina! Inflation going rampant since forever, old people frequently say things like "it cost me a million pesos", when it was actually a thousand 😅

              Reply

              1. Frederik says:

                Ah, forgot, as for the names, we used to say the name of the painted person in the money, 500 were Skanderbeg and so on.
                While in Italy where I live, in Rome the jargon is:
                Sacco (bag) - means one of thousand (1 in euro, 1000 in the old lira)
                Scudo (shield) - 5 or 5000 euro / lira
                Piotta (can't translate in English) - 100 € or 100,000 lire

                Reply

      3. starenka says:

        Well, don't let me started with "šesták" ("sixer")...
        One gulden had 60 kreuzer. So one sestak was a 1/10 of a gulden (=six kreuzer). Now in 1857 a decadic system kicked in and a gulden became 100 kreuzer. So a sestak was still 1/10 aka 10 kreuzer. Later on as you described a devalvation came in and it actualy became 20 kreuzer. In present times it means 20 hallers which is a fifth a of Czech Crown (CZK)

        Reply

      4. Alexander Grebenkov says:

        When a Russian person says to another Russian "Дай рубль" ("give me a rouble"), does he mean 1 RUB (1 ₽) or one thousand RUB (1000 ₽)? You'll never know, unless you know what the situation between them is.

        Reply

  4. says:

    Rachel’s right, though if you didn’t have any tanners on your person, one and a half groats should sort you out.

    Reply

  5. Wendy M. Grossman says:

    Alex Gibson: experimentation has shown me that you can ignore the poles. But these things are all hateful.
    wg

    Reply

    1. Jez Nicholson says:

      That's alright, if an Uber were a 'taxi' then it would have to follow rules and regulations 😉

      Reply

  9. Norman says:

    Yellow taxis are probably New York and Los Angeles centric. I live in Idaho USA, and don't recall ever seeing any yellow taxis here. The biggest taxi company in Boise has green cars, when they are painted.

    Reply

    1. LH says:

      Both count, obviously. I can't see how people would interpret it any other way.

      Reply

  27. Kurt Reed says:

    Not every yellow car is a taxi, not every taxi is yellow. Color is irrelevant. You know it's a taxi because it has words on it to that effect and often a taxi sign on top. But yeah users shouldn't have to know what taxis look like around the world.

    Reply

  30. said on beko.famkos.net:

    I never knew what exactly put me off on the most used captcha system out there but now I do. It’s not only the foreign language but the assumption I’d know what the pictures are about at all.
    BTW we usually have taxis in RAL 1015 (light ivory) here in Germany but nowadays other colours are possible – just not very common.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on beko.famkos.net

  31. Ram says:

    I've seen recaptcha ask me in my native language (Dutch) to select all bicycles, though, it showed me only pictures of motorcycles. In Dutch those two are not the same word!

    Reply

  35. Bobolobo says:

    Show people working a job…see if anyone under 30 can figure out what the people are doing. That would be a perfect Captcha.

    Reply

  37. FR says:

    We used to have Francs in France, pre-Euro. I was born in the 70's so I used them for quite long. My grandmother was counting in Old Francs (Anciens Francs, 100 AF = 1 Franc).
    The funny thing is that this went for two generations and plenty of prizes were given in AF (the old francs), to make the prize bigger.

    Reply

  39. Mr Roly Poly says:

    I deliberately do not answer them correctly but still get considered human. Some are one how you react rather than the answer and nearly all of them need three answers plus. Google are being sneaky as the test is the the test you think it is.

    Reply

  42. a.wright says:

    I just want to know why we have to prove to a non-human that we are human???? I hate those little test.

    Reply

  43. Janey says:

    This is 100% due to the arrogance and hubris of Google, which as usual, fails to think outside of its own little bubble. It's unfortunate and annoying.

    Reply

  44. Jim says:

    “Crosswalks” are my bugbear, particularly because Google once graced me with a “Pedestrian Crossing”, proving it knows what I call them.
    This will eventually kill someone when an erratically driving private hire cab pulls out in front of a self driving car because it didn’t know it was a taxi that drives like a taxi. Everyone is worried that minorities will be affected by biased datasets, and that is most certainly a problem, but I think its outright irresponsible to just ignore the issue of peoples’ lives being in danger because cars thing they live in yankiland

    Reply

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    ウェブサイトを訪問したりユーザー登録したりする際に遭遇する CAPTCHA や reCAPTCHA は、「○○のタイルをすべて選択してください」といった問題を出し、ユーザーがボットが人間かを識別しています。そんなCAPTCHAについてイギリス人のハッカーである テレンス・エデン さんは、「相手が人間であることを証明するのではなく、『アメリカ人』かどうかを証明している」と非難し、多くの人々が賛同のコメントを寄せています。 CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American – Terence Eden’s Blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/captchas-dont-prove-youre-human-they-prove-youre-american/ CAPTCHAやreCAPTCHAによる認証を要求されると、以下のような画面が表示されます。「私はロボットではありません」にチェックを入れると…… 以下の画面のように、「横断歩道の画像をすべて選択してください。すべて選択し終わったら［確認］をクリックしてください」といったクイズが出題されます。 出題されるクイズはさまざまで、「バスのタイルをすべて選択してください」という場合や…… 「山や丘」を選択する場合もあります。 また、「信号機のタイルをすべて選択してください」といったクイズの場合、隣のタイルにほんの少しだけはみ出た部分を「信号機」に含めるのかどうか、非常に悩んだ経験がある人も多いはず。 エデンさんはCAPTCHAについて記したブログ記事の中で、小さい頃に受けたIQテストについて振り返っています。当時7歳だったエデンさんは、「キャンディー1個の価格は25『セント』です。ジョニーは『ダイム』を持っています。キャンディーを買うために何枚の『ニッケル』が必要ですか？」という問題を読んで非常に困惑したとのこと。 問題文にあった「セント(約1円)」はアメリカ合衆国におけるお金の単位であり、「ダイム」は10セント硬貨のこと、「ニッケル」は5セント硬貨のことを指します。この点を知っていれば、答えは「3枚」だとわかりますが、イギリスに住んでいたエデンさんは問題文自体の意味がわかりませんでした。同様に、文化的な違いのせいで回答できない問題がIQテストには複数あったそうで、テストは他の文化的背景を持つ受験者への配慮を欠いていたといえます。 ある日、エデンさんは以下の画像のように、「タクシーの画像をすべて選択する」というクイズに回答するように求められました。しかし、イギリスのタクシーは一般的に黒色であり、黄色の車体を見て「これはタクシーだ」と気づけるのは、アメリカに住んでいるか映画などでアメリカの文化を知っている人だけだとエデンさんは指摘。日本でもタクシーの色はさまざまであり、「アメリカのタクシーは黄色である」という事前知識がないと、スムーズに回答することは困難です。 エデンさんは、CAPTCHAが判別するのは回答者が「人間であるかどうか」ではなく、「アメリカ人であるかどうか」だと主張。アメリカの文化を知らない人を「人間」だと識別できないシステムは問題だと述べています。 この記事に対しては、エデンさんと同じ疑問を抱いた多くの人々から賛同のコメントが寄せられています。IQテストの問題に対しては、各国にはさまざまな通貨や特定の硬貨に対する特殊な呼称があるという 意見が集まった ほか…… 「crosswalk(横断歩道)」や「sidewalk(歩道)」といったアメリカ英語を使われる点も困りものだという意見も。イギリスでは横断歩道のことを「pedestrian crossing」、歩道のことを「pavement」と呼ぶため、CAPTCHAで「Crosswalk」を選択するように問われてもイギリス人にはわかりにくいとのこと。 また、多くのコメントで指摘されていたのが、「消火栓」と「パーキングメーター」についてのクイズです。以下のように、消火栓やパーキングメーターの画像を選択するように求めるクイズは、CAPTCHAでたまに目にします。 しかし、「 信号機は少なくとも一般的といえますが、消火栓は…… 」 「 私の子どもたちは消火栓とパーキングメーターに戸惑っています 」 「 私はこれまでに消火栓を見たことがありません 」といったコメントが寄せられるなど、多くの人が消火栓やパーキングメーターをなじみのない存在だと指摘しています。 さらに、「 インターネットはアメリカではないということを思いだしてください 」というコメントや…… 「アメリカ人が『地元の人々がアメリカのスラングを熟知していて、アメリカのポップカルチャーを知っている』と考えて他の国をのし歩くのを見るほど恐ろしいものはありません」など、アメリカ人が自分の文化を他国の人々に押し付ける点に不快感を示す コメント もあります。 また、アメリカ人のユーザーからも、「黄色いタクシーはおそらくニューヨークとロサンゼルスを中心に存在しています。私はアメリカのアイダホ州に住んでいますが、ここで黄色いタクシーを見たことはありません」と 述べ 、アメリカ国内でも文化が違うと指摘する意見が上がっていました。 この記事のタイトルとURLをコピーする

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