From SSL encryption to website CAPTCHAs, there are myriad ways to protect ourselves and our websites from malicious actors online. While SSL certificates might be more niche to site owners, everyone knows CAPTCHA.
Ever get frustrated by a CAPTCHA that’s impossible to interpret only for a website to declare you’re a bot, preventing you from completing whatever action you wanted to perform? You’re not the only one. Even so, they’re all over the web. Fortunately, Cloudflare has come up with what they claim is a frustration-free alternative.
Before we get into that, let’s take a look at why CAPTCHAs are even a thing.
Why are CAPTCHAs everywhere on the web?
Short for completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart (you can really see why they shortened it), CAPTCHAs were invented by British mathematician Alan Turing in the 1950s to see whether a computer could demonstrate similar intelligence to a human. Usage later evolved to create puzzles humans should be able to solve and bots can’t. This modern CAPTCHA was developed by consulting professor Luis von Ahn, who then went on to invent ReCaptcha, which is now owned by Google.
CAPTCHAs are an integral part of the modern web. They make sure only humans with the correct password can access specific accounts. This helps prevent a multitude of malicious actions, from an influx of spam comments to data theft. But the unfortunate reality is that these bots are getting more sophisticated at figuring out CAPTCHA puzzles; therefore, the puzzles are becoming more complex. And, as the CAPTCHA subreddit likes to point out, these puzzles often seem impossible or can have inaccurate results. Unfortunately, until now, CAPTCHA has been one of the only affordable options that small websites had for keeping bots away.
Turnstile — Cloudlare’s CAPTCHA alternative
Cloudflare recently announced the beta version of Turnstile, which it describes as a user-friendly, privacy-preserving alternative to CAPTCHA. The main difference between Turnstile and CAPTCHA is that it filters out bots by challenging the browser instead of the user. Its rotating suite of browser challenges is non-intrusive and based on client behavior and telemetry.
The challenges include ones that determine human behavior and browser quirks, as well as probes for web APIs and proof of space. It also has a machine learning model to remember visitors who passed a challenge previously.
In the announcement blog post, Cloudflare discusses how CAPTCHA is not only bad for user-friendliness but also privacy. It points out that although reCAPTCHA (which accounts for 97% of the CAPTCHA market share) is free to use, you’re paying with the data you must send to the company in exchange (though Google says they don’t use this information for ad targeting).
Meanwhile, Cloudflare is offering Turnstile for free without data collection. You don’t even have to use the company’s other services to adopt it.
The takeaway
Turnstile is exciting news for the large population of the Internet that’s sick of confusing CAPTCHAs. While it’s still in the beta stages, the prognosis seems promising.
Cora is a digital copywriter for SSLs.com. Having eight years of experience in online content creation, she is a versatile writer with an interest in a wide variety of topics, ranging from technology to marketing.