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by LegionMammal978 635 days ago
FWIW, it can't be cookies alone that gives you an inordinate number of bot challenges. I use private tabs on Firefox (for Linux and Android) for most of my browsing, and I rarely get any challenges regardless of what I do. The only issues tend to be when I make repeated searches for things with "quotes" and whatnot on Google or on Stack Exchange sites. But for the most part, those challenges aren't particularly drawn-out: I've only ever gotten the "fading" ones when I'm using Tor or a VPN.
2 comments
Aachen 634 days ago
It varies a lot based on what I'm doing. Sites that rely on ads like english-language¹ recipes or health information have a lot of "you're European so you're blocked altogether" or "let me check that the connection is secure, ah wait, here is a captcha for you to solve" pages. Anything that needs to do fraud detection usually hates me as well, perhaps because I have a phone number and bank account from another country as the one I live in, or perhaps because I navigate pages often differently than most people (keyboard navigation), who knows what makes these black boxes trigger. That German ISPs have daily-rotating IP addresses, so there is absolutely nothing tying a previous request to the current request, may also be a factor

All in all, I'm someone who would benefit from a society not run by algorithms, where I can just pay up front for my use (no credit mechanisms, no fraud detection, no tracking ads), at least as an available option

¹ it's the language I think in the most and has many more resources than the local languages I speak

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account42 633 days ago
Weird, I've not encountered region locks on recipe sites. From my experience it's mostly (smaller) news sites that do that.
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throwaway2037 634 days ago 

    > That German ISPs have daily-rotating IP addresses
This is interesting. What is the purpose? Security? Privacy?
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tpxl 634 days ago
Preventing hosting from a home server without paying for a static IP.
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account42 633 days ago
Whatever the reason, it's not unilaterally true. I've had the same IP for years on a normal consumer cable internet connection.
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grepfru_it 634 days ago
>or a vpn

My wife does not get these captchas yet I do, on the same network. I have more privacy enhancing software on my devices. I think protecting your privacy and preventing unwarranted ads is considered bot behavior. This should absolutely be villainized and banned from practice

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