The end is nigh for CAPTCHAs

One of the most frustrating experiences online is filling out a CAPTCHA.

If you have used the internet in the last two decades, you know what a CAPTCHA is and you likely hate it too. Spending a minute to figure out which letters and numbers the distorted lines on the screen mean or to find out which squares have a traffic light in them is no fun when all you are trying to do is access a website.

And if your dislike for them is as intense as ours, then you should know that you may not have to fill in CAPTCHAs all the time anymore if a new feature from both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge is rolled out.

But before heading to the solution, let us take a look at what exactly it is and why the entire online population had to deal with it for such a long time.

CAPTCHA is a contrived acronym for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart'.

It is a type of challenge-response test used to determine whether the user is human in order to keep bot attacks and spam away. The term was coined in 2003 and it became one of the primary ways to tell humans and bots apart for websites ever since.

Browsers working on a feature to skip CAPTCHA

In April, an X (formerly Twitter) user Leopeva64 found that Google Chrome for Desktop was testing a new feature to auto-verify CAPTCHAs. He posted, sharing screenshots, "Google has quietly added a new 'Auto-verify' page in Chrome Settings, 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 if a user has once solved a CAPTCHA on a website, it will bypass the puzzle the next time and automatically verify the user as a real human. This means if a website you frequent has a CAPTCHA at entry or on any other screen thereafter, you will not have to solve it.

And it gets better. A couple of days ago, Leopeva64 posted on X again and highlighted that Microsoft Edge is also testing a similar feature. He said, "Four months ago I spotted 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)".

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