Captcha Issues

[User14]

I know you guys try your best but I became very frustrated after I recently tried to provide you with feedback, but I could not post it because of the image below.  I tried different O 0  I 1 combinations but it was all for nought.  I was not over 500 characters either!

I was trying to indicate that the instructions for the App Password were written for a tech geek, not my 70 year old grandmother. I suggested you provide a video! All your surveys and requests for improvement seem to go nowhere.  I do not think I am alone in my frustration with Rogers support.

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[57]

In a manner similar to @OLDYELLR , I always try to sign into my Notifications page, using Chrome. I often go days or months without seeing a Captcha.  I have it bookmarked.  Perhaps part of your issue is exacerbated by using different login points and different browsers.

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/notificationfeed/page

When I travel, I use Firefox and often encounter Captchas then, but I put that down to cookies on my MacBook Pro (and browser) being different from my Mac Mini at home.  I just haven't bothered downloading Chrome to my MacBook Pro since I use it so little.

Yes, the forums should be easily accessible from any (compatible) browser and any (compatible) computer/OS, however, it feels good when I stop banging my head against the wall and find something that works most times.

[jays77]

I usually log in from the MyRogers page and sometimes get the captchas and sometimes not. They are a bit annoying but I can live with them if need be.

What is more irritating is that very often while reading a thread or trying to reply to one I am automatically signed out of the forum and there is no way I can get signed back in. It still shows me as signed in at the bottom of the page.
If I return to MyRogers I am usually still signed in there,

[barndoor]

Since my last post here I have been to a couple of websites that have used captchas .. Both used them in what I thought was an appropriate manner ,and that was BEFORE  registration  to sort out the bots .  Does any one know  ...why Rogers is using captchas  POST registration and what is it actually protecting anyone from ? 

I have had a captcha every time out of the last eight times I have logged in .

Thanks 

[User14]

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@barndoor wrote:

Since my last post here I have been to a couple of websites that have used captchas .. Both used them in what I thought was an appropriate manner ,and that was BEFORE  registration  to sort out the bots .  Does any one know  ...why Rogers is using captchas  POST registration and what is it actually protecting anyone from ? 

I have had a captcha every time out of the last eight times I have logged in .

Thanks 

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For me, it seems to be random. I thought you only got one Captcha at the start of the day, but I guess not.

Either I get this log on form with the Captcha Notice:

Or, I get this one, without the Captcha Notice. No rhyme or reason that I can figure out. 

Maybe it depends upon where you start to try and login. 

Could they have figured out a better system. you Betcha! 

[barndoor]

Can anyone  direct me to information that this is an appropriate use for captchas   please  .  So far I have read half a dozen articles and non so far have  suggested that captchas are even needed here  in the way they are being used. 

Thanks in advance  for any info .

[BS]

To @barndoor  and others, I have been following the threads with interest, and I do have the same question asked by Barndoor - just what is the purpose.

Let's consider the two primary purposes of a captcha or recaptcha as the two types.

I got these by Googling - I will comment on the irony of that in a moment.

First is the prevention of the creation of mass user accounts on forums and the like where bots could then begin to post by algorithm.  Think of the Facebook issue of the US election and other communication and social media sites.

In one article I read, there are various strategies that can prevent this that are less of a pain than Captcha.

1. is a hidden field that bots will detect from the code and try to fill based upon the code on the website of fields to be completed, but a user can't see it.

2. is the use of the I am not a Robot, a simple captcha like way of catch bot behaviour, which bots beat only 23% of the time, the article I read.  It has been demonstrated in other studies that all the captcha methods can be beaten.

It can also be used to prevent spam posting by bot on a legitimate account.

This would seem to be the purpose of the Captcha for the forum - guess there is concern that a user will use a bot to "spam the system" with responses - that is the only valid reason I can see that, but there are so many other ways to capture that type of behaviour through firewall tracking, traffic monitoring, etc.

Now back to Google for a second - maybe the purpose of the captua screens in revenue stream.

Early captua's of distorted letters were used by google to do things like identify distorted text for the NY Times, as scanned and OCR's text had poor accuracy - bu clipping the distorted text and presenting it to people in the screen, they were able to do a store old newspapers onto digital media with 97% accuracy and do it in 4 months, where it would have taken years with people one by one reviewing errors.

A second purpose for them was to build the scanning of their large Google Books libraries.

I could see with the new ones with all the focus on stop signs, signs, crosswalks, buses, cars, etc, maybe be a way to digitize vague representations required for automated cars and detection of key features on the roadway.

But one of the things made about the use of these tools, is that the level of security achieved from preventing whatever you are trying to prevent from bots must exceed the amount of error and frustration for the customer, or the user will move on.  Currently a typical Captua studies show that on average a captcha process takes around 45seconds to complete, and errors are made 23% of the time.

Rogers must make an attempt to ensure that multiple captuas are not being presented in order to not frustrate the customer.

I get captuas on my phone all the time, never on my laptop anymore, and on my phone, it is an extremely awkard method with many errors, as I use a specialized keyboard which doesn't like to hide when the captcha shows up.  I have to backup one screen with the left arror to get rid of the keyboard and see the screen, and as a final note, one of the greatest criticixms of Captcha's is that they slow the user down and frustrate them as they want to move to their work, and secondly for those with visual disabilities, and even the auditory one is awkard to use, it is a huge burden on their ability to even get in.

Interesting also, is the Captch product Rogers is using is provided by Google, so what is Google doing with the data as it is demonstrated that they have been using data from these for quite a while.  Once again, we become the product, and the overal security gained and reducing of spamming and creation of fake accounts by bots is questionable in my point of view.

Keep reporting your challenges - for my self, I couldn't be bothered once it stopped, but there still remain times, where it is click, fail, click fail, over and over again, and yes, I have the two account challenge issue like @57  describes.  One has a forum account the other doesn't and sometimes I accidently forget to log out of my "customer account" login and get refused by the forum, and get caught in loops, until I close it all out, and start all over again.

I work with it, but I also get the impression that maybe because the users who are reporting these are logged in frequently, maybe the algorythims treat frequent in out as bots - I don't know, but I agree, it is a pain for sure, and I personally see no valid reason for its use - there are already rules around spam, I would hope their firewalls would catch a attach on their site due to a bot that got by and shut it down, and I would hope that there is accounts are shut down if you use the wrong password too many times.

When you consider that most forums I am aware of at best they have the single I am a robot, none of my financial and shopping accounts have them, and it seems that they are disappearing with new technologies.  So hopefully they pack them in at some point.  Where it seems very odd is that I put in MyRogers log in and it asks for a Captcha - I am not going to the Forums - My forum is populated with my credentials and password which I follow high level secure password practices, and then it wants to confirm I am not a robot - there are more effective ways of confirming this type of security level - questions like when you log in on a different computer, you are challenged, infrequent use leads to challenges, 2 level verification - Google confirm your profile and security information intermittently, locked out accounts after multiple failures, etc.  Captcha is not the tool for this level.

So keep the discussion going, maybe Rogers is listening in (not the moderators, but the security team) and listening to these legitimate questions and the challenges that the practice is creating and that it is no longer industry standard.

Plus my own curiousity - this is a Google tool API and has been used for pure business purposes for Google having nothing to do with us as customers of Rogers or Rogers business, but more for their own goals of building data to achieve their own corporate goals.  Not that the Catcha method was designed to do this, they just figured out that it could be done this way, not to validate the user, but to validate the data presented and compared by millions of people, in effect we become a OCR and image recognition tool.

I will keep following - try to be patient and keep pushing at them.  I don't actually log on much anymore, just read, so it is not impacting me very much, and I don't log in to MyRogers very much either.

Bruce

[barndoor]

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@BS wrote:

Now back to Google for a second - maybe the purpose of the captua screens in revenue stream.

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And now the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place .

Thanks Bruce .

[User14]

@BS   That is quite a lot of info for a technician to digest.  

@barndoor  is making the same case as you that about these security tools. "The level of security achieved from preventing whatever you are trying to prevent from bots must exceed the amount of error and frustration for the customer".

You have to wonder what the future holds:  I am not a robot - checked by a robot      and if it is worth the effort.

More frustrating for me however, is logging into to my "customer account" to view my data, then being refused when I try to open the link to the Community Forums. I constantly get caught in this loop of being in the forum but not being in the forum to post. This is more frustrating and time consuming for me. As you say:  click, fail, click fail, over and over again!  Once you are in this loop, also notice that there is no possibility to "sign out" in order to sign back into the Community Forum. You are stuck there until you close out of Rogers completely, then start all over again by typing Rogers Community Forums.  Of course, you get the Captcha gauntlet of painsticks but it is only a secondary frustration for me.

The final challenge is not having this issue addressed at all. Remember your 2017 case of "Am I really being ignored?"  where @57  indicated that he was not receiving PMs.  Both you and 57 only had 2 character IDs and that was the cause of the problem.  I think we are having a similar technical problem here that is not being analyzed.   

I doubt that "Logging into the Community Forums" has been made difficult by design, but it has not been addressed for at least two years that I can see. Perhaps the Lithium technicians don't have the time to read the symptoms of the problem being posted here or this issue is not a priority.  

[barndoor]

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@User14 wrote:

I doubt that "Logging into the Community Forums" has been made difficult by design, but it has not been addressed for at least two years that I can see. 

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But if the problem is a result of something that Rogers does to generate revenue  that would explain it being ignored .  What that would be I have no idea .

I have been to enough bulletin boards .... and at least one other run  by lithium , that I believe what is going on here is strictly Rogers related  and if they don't want to be bothered fixing it and you can't find a work around  .... may as well pack it in here. The other bulletin boards are so simple to access compared to this one ...it is border line ridiculous

I'm using chrome ,I think and I have the home page for this forum bookmarked ...that way I don't have to even log in to catch up only to post. I clicked on reply on your post and the sign in came up which i clicked on and did the captcha (I have one EVERY time) . .  It took me to the My ROGERS  account selection page (two weeks or so ago it started doing this,...before that it took me to the page to reply to your post automatically)  I clicked on the back button and it took me to the reply page to respond to your post and showed me as logged in and able to respond to your post  . 

I have really had no major issues with this procedure for the last couple years that have not been resolved by just going away and coming back next day or a couple days later . I learned a while ago that the clearing cache and deleting cookies seemed to be just a waste of time and an excuse that Rogers staff  seem to use to get you to spend more time here it seems like . Maybe the more times you log in here the more money they make somehow ...I don't know,  but that works for me to log in and works pretty consistently for me. 

[User14]

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@barndoor wrote:

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Maybe the more times you log in here the more money they make somehow ...I don't know,  but that works for me to log in and works pretty consistently for me. 

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You think Roger's is that Machiavellian.  If this gets removed for not being on topic, you may be right.   

[BS]

Yes, for sure, my ability to simplify my descriptions is deteriorating as my cognitive disability and dyslexia becomes more engaged.  Oh well.  That is part of why I post less than I used to.

And yes, I remember the days of 57 and me not being recognized as users in the PM system.

I think the challenge for us that go to the forums regularly, post or don't post, we get confronted frequently by every change that we have to learn or that didn't work well. Then we figure out workarounds, attempt to communicate what the issue is and sometimes they get fixed, sometimes, we just learn to live with it and treat it as a pain in the neck that we have to put up with to do what we want to do.

Ahh - the joys of Lithium and the ongoing challenges of the single point of authorization that has been put in place for the forums, our accounts, Anyplace, other apps, and logging into the outside online media companies.  It has been a bit of growing pains since they imlemented single point login systems, yet this technology isn't new, it has been around since I worked with consultants on security systems and that is going on 20 years now.

So, yes, you may be right, my descriptions may be beyond the level of a tech to comprehend and work with.

But I do hope they take the issue seriously, it certainly seems to be driving long term and frequent contributors a little bit nuts.  And yes, we are being checked to determine if we are a robot by a robot and the process is only as efficient (notice I didn't say intelligent) as the team that implements it.

As always, enjoy the forum and have a good weekend.

Bruce

[BS]

Here is the link to the most recent version of reCaptcha v3.0

https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/v3.html

It is a nice slick presentation, it is also free to use - but they also acknowledge the following:

Hundreds of millions of CAPTCHAs are solved by people every day. reCAPTCHA makes positive use of this human effort by channeling the time spent solving CAPTCHAs into annotating images and building machine learning datasets. This in turn helps improve maps and solve hard AI problems.

So, the security feature is free for Rogers or anyone to use on their login screens, certainly pushed by Google as the best thing next to sliced bread, but they do acknowledge that "our effort" is helping imjprove maps and solve hard AI problems.

"Creation of Value

Help everyone, everywhere - One CAPTCHA at a time."

So let's be happy, everyone of those pictures is helping with maps and solving hard AI problems.  Just a mere use of our time to help out with others.  So is the priority of Google security (that is questioned by other experts), or using us to validate and improve their recognition software or AI process, or as I like to call it, Automated interaction, not artificial intelligence.

Food for thought -  Also maybe being signed into Google makes the feature more efficient - I am logged into Google no matter what browser I use.

Bruce

[BS]

A deeper dive in the code - Rogers sites are highly embedded with javascript modules to run just about everything.

https://www.sitepoint.com/disable-javascript-option/

In the attached article for those who want to go a bit deeper technically, it speaks the whole issue of disabling java script and also provides some explanation why Chrome tends to be their browser of choice at the moment - it has been optimized for javascript, but even they are beginning to give users the ability to block javascript.

The challenge for using Firefox with Rogers is their dependence on javascript - popups and javascript are blocked by default and you have to give use the shield in the top corner you click on it to disable blocking on the site.

Firefox is set up to opt out by default and then individually log-in as you choose to - I can't run the login and forums without disabling javascript blocking in firefox.

Edge doesn't make disabling easy.  So things like captcha, designed by Google and optimized by Google for Chrome.  reCaptcha can be used on any browser, but in the case of Rogers use, a look at the web code, they have imbedded the API for reCaptcha into javascript modules, and the login screen is also imbedded, so there is a risk with bookmarks and on phones and tablets, or poor web connections the modules can fail and force us to start over again.

Theoretically I understand the issues, but I am not a programmer anymore and javascript as suggested in this article can be optimized for HTML 5.  So let's hope they are moving there to improve our experience.

Bruce

[barndoor]

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@User14 wrote:

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You think Roger's is that Machiavellian. 

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I think that implies  a craftiness  or cleverness  being applied  ....I think this  is more a case of following a possible revenue stream and giving it more importance than the convenience of your customers ... just simple business priorities rather  than any thing  more complicated.

[RogersDarrell]

Hey Community,

We have recently implemented an update to the MyRogers login that should reduce the number of CAPTCHAs that pop. Please do let us know your experience.

However, it was made clear that those who login in frequently over short time periods may still see a high rate of CAPTCHAs.

RogersDarrell

[User14]

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@RogersDarrell wrote:

Hey Community,

We have recently implemented an update to the MyRogers login that should reduce the number of CAPTCHAs that pop. Please do let us know your experience.

However, it was made clear that those who login in frequently over short time periods may still see a high rate of CAPTCHAs.

RogersDarrell

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As requested, I tried to log in from the email I received when someone replies to this Message Thread.

I clicked on Sign In, entered password, and ended up on MyRogers page. 

                               NO CAPTCHA by the way. Thanks for that.

Since I was there at Overview, I thought I would check my Internet Data Usage. Instead of being shown the data graph, I ended up back here at "Captcha Issues".  Signing in is always a novel experience so I am not sure if that was unusual or not.  There's my first experience with your new MyRogers login.  

[57]

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@User14 wrote:

Since I was there at Overview, I thought I would check my Internet Data Usage. Instead of being shown the data graph, I ended up back here at "Captcha Issues".  

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I've mentioned this in the various login threads. If you end up in MyRogers and click Internet usage and end up in the forum, simply click the back button and click the internet usage button again. You should then be taken to your internet usage properly.  Happens to me all the time.  

Rogers should really separate the forum and the MyRogers sections, but they insist on having them tied together causing all of these login and link/redirect issues.  If they were separate, this wouldn't happen.

I do appreciate that I'm not bugged for Captchas every time I log recently, but I'm still encountering the other issues recently discussed in the login threads - like having to click my notifications link twice, or having to click to get past the two account popups, etc.

[OLDYELLR]

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@57 wrote:

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Rogers should really separate the forum and the MyRogers sections, but they insist on having them tied together causing all of these login and link/redirect issues.  If they were separate, this wouldn't happen.

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I fully agree and have stated that in the past. My Rogers is for Rogers customers, but  Community Forums is used by anybody, present, past, future or just critics. I appreciate the need for extra security for Rogers customers seeking account information, but it's ludicrous for mere forum participants.  For some time now signing is has been inconsistent. You never know where you'll end up when using the same bookmark. Now half the time I'm not even presented with the sign-in popup, but taken to a page promoting Ignite TV or an iPhone. But I suppose these random inconsistencies would thwart bots.

[jpbazinet]

Has anyone else noticed a huge increase in captcha's logging into various websites while using Rogers?

I get them everywhere I go now, and I have family members, and a separate work account that are getting them all the time too. Has a large block of Rogers IP's been blacklisted?

I'd consider it normal to see a few here and there... or that it was just my IP that was flagged, except for the fact that I know (and have seen with my own eyes) many other Rogers accounts with the same behaviour.

To clarify: This is happening everywhere. Not just on rogers.com

[barndoor]

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@jpbazinet wrote:

Has anyone else noticed a huge increase in captcha's logging into various websites while using Rogers?

Rogers is your  IP ? 

Rogers is  not  my IP and I have noticed no increase  in captcha's anywhere ...even here ...I have had non here in the last couple weeks .

[User14]

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@jpbazinet wrote:

Has anyone else noticed a huge increase in captcha's logging into various websites while using Rogers?

I get them everywhere I go now, and I have family members, and a separate work account that are getting them all the time too. Has a large block of Rogers IP's been blacklisted?

I'd consider it normal to see a few here and there... or that it was just my IP that was flagged, except for the fact that I know (and have seen with my own eyes) many other Rogers accounts with the same behaviour.

EDIT:

This post was moved from it's own thread to here. I saw this thread, and since it dealt pretty exclusively with captchas on the Rogers site, I felt it didn't belong. To clarify: This is happening everywhere. Not just on rogers.com

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I use to get a lot of the Captchas using Chrome, but not anymore. I also have an ad blocker.  Note that I can NOT sign into the Forum after signing in to MyRogers anymore, but that is another Rogers issue for a different thread.  The easiest way for me to sign in now WITHOUT a Captcha is to open up one of the Rogers emails I get telling me there is a post. When it comes up, I can read the post each time.  So to sign in, I use this post and click REPLY, then when the blank screen appears for my comments, I THEN click the SIGN IN at the top right.  I will get a prompt for my password but there are no CAPTCHAs during this process. I must assume the software must remember my IP address from the last time I posted.  This is my workaround to avoid the CAPTCHA issue.