Rapidshare have implemented a new captcha system a while ago that was most likely be added to fight all the automatic downloaders that were able to fill out the captcha for the user to automate the download process. The new captcha however turns out to be harder to beat. Not only for computer scripts though but also for normal visitors of Rapidshare.
The captcha is made up of characters and animal images and the user is asked to fill in the four letters that have the image of a cat attached to them. The problem with that captcha however is that the animal images look really alike and it is damn hard to tell if you see a cat, a dog, a donkey or some other four-legged animal with a tail.
If you concentrate you can identify the cats and fill in the form. The problem is that a wrong answer will load yet another capture with and you have to start over again. I’m all for protection and anti-spam measures but this one is going to far in my opinion. There are better ways to implement captchas. What’s your take on that new captcha ?
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Completely agree, they’ve gone way over the top on this new protection. You need either a degree in science or pure good luck to work out what some of them are! :)
I hate the new captchas. I use Rapidshare a lot and it’s so frustrating when I’m in a rush and I type the code in wrong and have to wait another 3 minutes for the file to become available. I e-mailed Rapidshare Support (maybe if enough people do, they’ll change their captchas [support@rapidshare.com]), and they gave me their typical “We’re trying to prevent bots” e-mail.
I stopped using RapidShare a long time ago. There are lots of better alternatives. I am in love with www.filedropper.com right now.
I’ve simply stopped using rapidshare. I don’t need to list the other options, we saw them just a few days ago on ghacks. Also, I did write to them but I’ve yet to get a response.
agree,
bye the way, may be it’s not only to prevent bots, but to annoy “no premium user” too >:)
I think that if you use a service a lot you should pay for it. The captcha is really really annoying, but it does allow free samples.
@Car: Why should I pay for a site like RS.com when there are plenty other sites offering the exact same service without those annoying captchas and for free?
There are _so many_ similar services. Rapidshare is crap, not only for its captchas, but also for its annoying usage (incl. waiting times). Just switch to one of the other sites and let Rapidshare finally die…
Well their (not only rapidshare, these sites in general) business model always was “annoy leechers into buying premium” so it’s not strange change at all. And that is probably their first capthca that actually has chance to stop bots so they must be pretty happy aboit it.
I don’t really get advantages of file hosting sites… Yeah, they are perfect for people to stuff them full with warez, but is there some hint of legitimate worth in there?.. Not sure I see it. :)
Hi martin the best way to sucessfully enter the new captch is LOOK FOR EYES..the ones with eyes (two dot like things) are the cats while the rest are dogs.And i tried to submit a post for the GHacks T shirt competition and when i clicked on submit it said done!…but i couldnt find that post …did you delete it? :(
I’ve stopped using Rapidshare because of them. It’s just too much work.
I actually have a premium account on Rapidshare, but this new scheme is a bit over the top. I understand the need to stop bots, but really? Counting cats? Not to mention that the dogs look almost exactly like the cats. I’d need a magnifying glass just to do anything. I’d probably waste more time just trying to count the number of cats than actually downloading something.
(flame alert! :) ) It’s from a cat person, what did you expect? Brains?
But seriously, you folks should go take a look at the captcha lunacy at softpedia.com. There is NO correct answer. And the ding dongs over there haven’t realized why there’s no feedback to their site.
Bah guys, it’s not so bad…you get used to it very quickly. I make no mistake now and I type it real fast. The trick is to spot the head of the animal…the cat’s head is much bigger than the dog’s head.
I really hate automatic downloader and it’s a step in the right direction. If it were just for me I’d make it a lot harder to be honest.
rapidshare premium. If you use rapidshare a lot its the only solution. Personally, i’m fully satisfied with the premium account
Guys, those spam are really really annoying. But there’s workaround for wrongly entered captcha (at least, that’s what I think).
Just press back, and you don’t have to wait another minutes. Bare in mind, that you can only do it twice, meaning, entering 3 wrong capctha. After those attempts, you WILL have to wait the countdown or get RS BUNDLE userscript.
note: I can’t comment using firefox. It prompts me password for ADSL router (60.53.96.66).
It looks like bots have more luck with new captcha, than humans, – they don’t get tired and annoyed ;) And there are semi-automatic bots, which can show to user only captcha without RS pages. So, they never improve their CTR.
To the top of it: bot authors make some money for their work, so they have a reason to maintain bots ;)
I use a simple math-captcha in my blog: What is 1 multiplied by 1? With this method I got rid of around 50 spam-bots a day. It’s a little PHP-Plugin for WordPress called WordVerify.
Stefan you probably also get rid of every woman :)
Hehe! I think it needs more than a simple math captcha to get rid of women. I use a decent haircut for this. :-)
No more use for Cryptload or RSD :(
Future of Capcha :)
Personally I find Rapidshare a lot faster than a lot of other services, plus the premium services are so widely used, it was the only thing that made sense to me.
my machine speed increases, but brainspeed decreases over time
soon we will not be able to log on anymore?
I had to lol at this really badly when I saw it for the first time. This is just too much. Took me some time to actually figure out what they wanted me to do X-D
The fact that it asks you for 4 LETTERS confused me for a while. I thought i was supposed to just ignore the numbers, apparently not!
Rapid Share sucks, these guys are insane … wicked captchas with weird animals in them, boring timers, quota-based downloads, what else are they going to invent to piss the users more!!?
I sometimes prefer to call them Stupid Share
@Green Data I think you’re missing the point of Rapidshare.. it’s supposed to entice you using the quota-based downloads. Imagine someone uploaded a movie in 8 parts. You can download 1 of these parts, but you really want to see this movie. You cna either wait the time limit, or ask friends to download it for you and then pass you the parts. If you do enough downloading you’re eventually gonna get sick of that…. and realize that the best option for you is a Rapidshare Premium Account..