Cloudflare introduces a user and privacy friendly alternative to CAPTCHAs. The new technology is said to be more privacy-friendly and to work in the background with its own logic and recognition of human users. Click puzzles should be fine with it.
The new API Turnstile makes classic CAPTCHAs superfluous: it works in the background and confirms web usage by humans during web interaction. The goal is to save Internet users the time it would take to solve a jumbled-up CAPTCHA word or photo puzzle every day
Turnstile: Goodbye picture click puzzles
Cloudflare is the specialist for security, performance and reliability with the declared goal of making the internet better. Today, the company introduced Turnstile, a simple, private way to replace CAPTCHA ("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") and help verify human interaction on the web. Now every website owner can use CAPTCHAs via a
replace simple API, regardless of whether they are a Cloudflare customer or not.
CAPTCHAs affect the user experience - that's the thought. User data is collected, which compromises the privacy of the user. CAPTCHAs usually consist of a task that is difficult for a computer but easy for a human to solve, such as recognizing distorted letters or numbers, or recognizing objects such as crosswalks or stop signs. It's estimated that people around the world waste a total of 500 years a day trying to solve CAPTCHAs.
Accessible use of the web
The tests are not only the speed brake of the Internet, they are also in contradiction to a barrier-free Internet. The implicit assumption with CAPTCHAs is that all users have the physical and cognitive skills to solve them. They also endanger the privacy of users. Nobody should have to give up private information just to prove they're not a robot. Cloudflare has developed a solution that replaces reCAPTCHA and preserves user privacy.
"Cloudflare makes one of the most hated internet technologies easier, safer and more private for everyone," said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "Similar to our app 1.1.1.1, which makes every user and the internet safer, we look forward to sharing Turnstile with developers of all sizes, everywhere for an enhanced and more private end-user experience."
Invisible CAPTCHA alternative
How it works Turnstile is a smarter, invisible CAPTCHA alternative. The solution automatically selects a set of browser challenges that work in the background, looking for signals for a human user. Turnstile can fine-tune the difficulty level of the challenge and provide tougher challenges for visitors who exhibit non-human behaviors. In addition, Turnstile recognizes Private Access Tokens from users of the latest versions of macOS or iOS, allowing Turnstile to validate a device with the help of the device provider without collecting, touching or storing the user's device data.
Turnstile now has the same stable solve rate as previously used CAPTCHAs. Using this technology, Cloudflare reduced its own use of CAPTCHAs by 91 percent and reduced the time visitors spent in a challenge from an average of 32 seconds to just one second on average to complete the non-interactive challenges. Turnstile can be used by any developer on their website, regardless of whether they are a Cloudflare customer.
More at Cloudflare.com
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare aims to make the internet better. The Cloudflare suite of products protects and accelerates any internet application without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. For websites powered by Cloudflare, all traffic is routed through an intelligent global network that learns with every request. The result is an improvement in performance and a reduction in spam and other attacks.