Many online users hate CAPTCHAs. Originally designed as a simple test to distinguish humans from bots, they’ve evolved into complex and often frustrating challenges. This blog examines the increasing complications of CAPTCHAs and explores whether passkeys could offer a more user-friendly alternative.

Drawbacks of CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs, short for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart,” are essential for internet security but come with significant drawbacks.
For users, they’re often time-consuming and annoying, especially challenging for visually impaired individuals. Businesses face conversion rate drops and GDPR compliance issues, while bots increasingly are able to pass these tests.

Alternatives to CAPTCHA

The quest for effective and user-friendly bot prevention methods has led to several alternatives, each with its unique approach:

• Cloudflare’s Turnstile: Revolutionizing bot prevention, Turnstile simplifies verification to a checkbox click, conducting background checks that blend user-friendliness with robust security.
• Arkose Labs: Offering more engaging formats for human verification, Arkose Labs focuses on creative challenges that are fun yet secure, balancing user experience with bot deterrence.
• hCAPTCHA: A privacy-centric option, hCAPTCHA maintains the conventional approach of CAPTCHAs while emphasizing data privacy, a response to concerns raised by Google’s reCAPTCHA. friendlyCAPTCHA: Prioritizing GDPR compliance and privacy,
• friendlyCAPTCHA offers background checks for suspicious activities, aligning with European data protection standards. Read more details about each alternative in the original blog post.

Passkeys as the new CAPTCHA?

Unlike traditional passwords or CAPTCHAs, a passkey is a unique digital representation of a user, which can assert their presence and confirm specific hardware specifications. This could promise a smoother user experience, similar to Google’s “Google One Tap” service, which allows effortless account creation or logins with just a click.

However, the current security and technical feasibility of passkeys doesn’t yet meet the theoretical opportunity at 100%. Find out the technical details and whether passkeys could replace CAPTCHA in the original blog post by Corbado:
CAPTCHA vs. Passkeys: Everyone hates CAPTCHA