A 2023 study published in UC Irvine revealed that Google’s reCAPTCHA system is more than just a security measure – it’s a tracking cookie farm generating nearly $1 trillion worth of data. The “Dazed and Confused” study analyzed two types of CAPTCHAs: invisible and image-based. It found that users spent 819 billion hours solving these puzzles, wasting billions of dollars in collective time.
The researchers added reCAPTCHA to an internal student account system without informing users, measuring completion times and surveying 3,600 participants. The results showed that users took more time and were negatively affected by the image detection CAPTCHAs. Variations in completion times were also observed across education disciplines, experience levels, and account creation/recovery processes.
The study estimated the impact of reCAPTCHA on society: 819 million hours spent solving CAPTCHAs (equivalent to 1,182.7 lifetimes), $6.1 billion worth of time at the US federal minimum wage, 134 Petabytes of internet bandwidth, and 7.5 million kWhs of energy consumption. The study concluded that bots are faster than humans in completing reCAPTCHA’s image detection CAPTCHAs while taking more time but being more accurate.
The researchers found that Google benefits greatly from reCAPTCHA, with estimated values ranging from $8.75 billion to $888 billion for the dataset and tracking cookies. They argued that reCAPTCHA serves as a “tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service.” The study’s findings suggest that reCAPTCHA should be deprecated due to its lack of genuine contribution to internet safety or functionality.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry