Bypassing CAPTCHAs with Creative Solutions: Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge

A new feature from Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge may alleviate the frustration of filling out CAPTCHAs, a common annoyance for internet users over the past two decades. Instead of spending time deciphering distorted letters and numbers or identifying objects in images, this feature aims to reduce the frequency of CAPTCHA prompts when accessing websites. If you share our intense dislike for CAPTCHAs, this development may bring some relief.

But before we get to the solution, let’s see what exactly it is and why the entire online population had to deal with it for so long. CAPTCHA is a coined acronym for “Fully Automated Public Turing Test to Distinguish Computers from Humans”. It’s a kind of challenge-response test to determine if the user is human to keep out bot attacks and spam. The term was coined in 2003 and since then it is one of the main ways to distinguish between humans and bots on websites.

Browsers are working on a feature to bypass CAPTCHA

In April, X (formerly Twitter) user Leopeva64 discovered that Google Chrome for Desktop was testing a new feature to automatically validate CAPTCHAs. Sharing the screenshots, he posted: “Google has quietly added a new ‘Automatic Verification’ page to Chrome settings, the Chromium developers call this feature ‘anti-abuse’ and it was added in February, but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. .

Basically, how it works is that if a user has solved a CAPTCHA on a website once, it will skip the puzzle the next time and automatically verify the user as a real person. This means that if a website you visit frequently has a CAPTCHA at the entrance or any other screen after that, you don’t have to solve it.

And it gets better. A couple of days ago, Leopeva64 posted again on X and highlighted that Microsoft Edge is also testing a similar feature. He said: “Four months ago I noticed a new feature in Chrome called ‘Auto-verify’. Well, it turns out that this new option is now also available in Edge… but in the Android version (Dev and Canary)” .

Edge is apparently only getting it on Android for now, but it’s a welcome move nonetheless. It should be noted that there is no release date for this feature, but it is believed that the features may be rolled out soon.