I’m getting really tired of “verify you’re not a bot” checks everywhere.
I understand these checks help prevent bots, but they seem to appear on so many websites now. Does anyone else find them frustrating?
I’m getting really tired of “verify you’re not a bot” checks everywhere.
I understand these checks help prevent bots, but they seem to appear on so many websites now. Does anyone else find them frustrating?
It sure can, instead of doing 50 requests. A slowdown is all that’s needed to make random scraping uneconomical.
https://github.com/mikenrafter/anubis-fast.mirror
This is a sample of a much faster anubis solver (end user facing).
There’s versions. of this for people running bot networks - it’s just a few cheap cloud cpu cycles to invest. Proof of work is an ineffective defense against spam in the age of cheap and scalable cloud compute - and even moreso if the botnet runs on residential proxies.
My point is, the slowdown is NOT making random scraping uneconomical anymore, it does hurt legitimate users a lot more.