this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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I love Microsoft’s email signup CAPTCHA:
Repeat ten times. Get one wrong, restart.
Private Access Tokens? Enabled by default in Settings > [your name] > Sign-In & Security > Automatic Verification. Neat that it works without us realizing it, but disconcerting nonetheless.
So, the spammers will need physical Android device farms…
More industry insight: walls of phones like this is how company's like Plaid operate for connecting to banks that don't have APIs.
Plaid is the backend for a lot of customer to buisness financial services, including H&R Block, Affirm, Robinhood, Coinbase, and a whole bunch more
Edit: just confirmed, they did this to pass rate limiting, not due to lack of API access. They also stopped 1-2 years ago
No way!! Can’t find anything about it online - is this info by the way of insiders? Thanks for sharing, would have NEVER guessed. Not even that they’d have to use Selenium much less device farms.
Yup insider info they definitely don't want public. Just confirmed the phone farms were to bypass rate limit, although they do use stuff like Selenium for API-less banks
Oh my god. I lost my fucking mind at the microsoft one. You might aswell have them solve a PhD level theoretical physics question
Just noticed the screenshot shows 1 of 5.
So five wasn’t good enough… they had to double it. Do kinda respect that they’re fighting spammers, but wonder how Google does it with Gmail. They seem to have tightened then recently loosened up on their requirement for SMS verification (but this may be an inaccurate perception).