How can I eliminat the captcha?

A captcha is a a squiggly string of letters that might pop up in your
browser. You are asked to copy them to prove that you aren't a
virus.

They just recently started appearing in all my Google groups. A real
pain in the ass.
Anyone know how to eliminate them?

I am using the Safari browser with Comcast.

 

Pete E. Kruzer wrote:
User-Agent: G2/1.0

You are currently accessing a usenet newsgroup via comcast connectivity
using a Mac Safari browser logged into googlegroups GG. That - GG - is a
very bad way to read and post to newsgroups; it would be far superior to
use an nntp newsserver and newsreader.

The captcha is a tool used by GG interface as a countermeasure against
automated malware which posts to googlespecific groups and usenet groups
via GG.

The countermeasure cannot be eliminated. It is frequently discussed in
google help groups. You can read the numerous discussions and complaints
by going to googlegroupshelp and entering captcha.

The disadvantages of reading and posting to usenet groups such as this one
using a browser and the GG interface are many. Some of them are: you
have no way of filtering spam or organizing threads in a useful way, your
posts may be filtered out by those who avoid spam and other unwanted posts
which are sourced from GG, the interface is terrible, you have no
convenient way of saving your own posts for later access, then there's the
captchas.

There are plenty of free and nearly free newsservers. There are also
plenty of free newsagents, even for Macs. A better way to enjoy
newsgroups such as this one is to use such a newsagent and newsserver;
the configuration and learning curve isn't at all bad. Some people like
to use the same agent for news as they do their mail.

 

Use a real newsreader. You will need a newsgroup server because Comcast
no longer provides one. I use the news.individual.net, it costs 10 Euros
per yer. They do an a very good job of filtering out SPAM, I noticed a
huge improvement when I switched back to them after Comcast dropped news.

http://www.individual.net/

 

An example of a free mail client is Outlook Express. Just note that it
upsets a few (probably longer-term) users because it top-posts by default.

You can either bottom-post or move with the times...

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"

 

Theres arguments for both top or bottom and been well argued over the
years! Try replying to business emails and bottom post. The recipient
now has to scroll through all the crap to see your reply. I don't mind
top posts or bottom posts. Doesn't matter but some get soooo bent outta
shape!!

 

I also have been using individual.net for 3 or 4 years now - on the
recommendation of someone here - possibly the General.

It is really inexpensive like he said, and message retention is several
months - I just checked, and can read messages back to Feb 2, and the
reliability is extremely good. I tried a couple of the most highly
recommended free servers several times and found them awful as far as
uptime and reliability.

The only inconvenience with individual.net is that you have pay either
with a direct bank draft or thru some European equivalent of PayPal - a
little bit of a hassle to set up an account just for a once-a-year
transaction of $10 or $15. But even with that slight inconvenience it is
light years ahead of everything else I tried for reliability and message
retention.

 

The OP mentioned that he was using Safari which means that he's a Mac
user. I'm a Linux user so I don't have any experience with Mac
newsreaders (I use Pan on Linux) but here is a link that should be
helpful,

http://www.newsreaders.com/mac/clients.html

A newsreader is orders of magnitude better than using Google Groups, the
presentation is much more convenient than is possible on a web page.

 

I just noticed that there is a version of Pan for OSX, Pan is a great
reader, give it a try.

 

NIN's 3 payment methods are (currently) bank transfer to a German bank for
the university, ClickandBuy (formerly FirstGate), or PayPal.

It is a very very well administered newsserver with excellent filtering of
spam and hipcrime using CleanFeed and despammer cancels.

Speaking of Putney (the London one), I was studying estuaries recently,
and learned that the Thames is an estuary.

 

Download SeaMonkey (Firefox plus newsgroups, the way Mozilla/Netscape
used to be) and read newsgroups the way they were meant to be read.

 

Hi!

You should check your computer and network (if you have more than one
computer) to see if one of your computers has picked up malicious
software. This tends to trigger Google's services into requiring you
to answer a captcha in order to continue.

Other things that could trigger the problem include:

1. The lease on your IP address expiring and your getting a new
address that was used by an infested computer elsewhere on the Comcast
network. It will take some time for Google to realize this and correct
its behavior. Comcast does issue new IP addresses for your Internet
connection quite frequently.

2. If you are running a Tor relay with exit node capabilities, this
too will cause Google to spew out captchas. It shouldn't, but it does.
(If you don't know what this means, chances are you're not doing
this.)

Some people feel the need to grump and complain about Google Groups,
without realizing that some people have lost their access to Usenet
because their ISP didn't think anyone was using it--or not enough
people were using it. And while both paid and free Usenet services are
available, some people can't justify the expense and free servers have
the problem of being abused similarly to Google Groups and that their
very existence as free resources could best be described as
"mercurial". I have both of the above problems with alternative Usenet
servers, although when I am at home, my ISP does still provide access
to Usenet.

I can understand and appreciate that some people use the GG front end
to Usenet without understanding what they are doing, thusly causing
problems. I can also understand that some degree of spam comes in from
Google Groups as well, and that this frustrates people. Some of the
spamming in some groups is bad, and a lot of it does originate from
Google's Groups front end to Usenet. Google is not as responsive as
they could be, although I have had success when reporting blatant spam
to their abuse desk.

In any case, I find little reason to boycott GG on those reasons
alone--we were all new to this once and undoutedly made mistakes.
There will always be people who don't care enough to gain an
understanding of the rules for a Usenet-based forum and abide by them.
The best you can hope to do is ignore them if they really bug you that
much, or block them if you must. And finally, I get more spam via
private e-mail than I see on any Usenet group combined, and I long ago
devised some filters that cut down on 80-85% of what I see when I'm
reading news at home from a "real" Usenet server.

(Oh boy, did I just get on a soap box or what?! Sorry.)

Mac OS X does not include a graphical Usenet news reader. Some paid
ones are available, as are some free ones. If your ISP offers access
to Usenet, you could find a "real" newsreader program such as Unison
(payware) or Mozilla Thunderbird (free). Or you could use a Unix-based
newsreading package, which may be included in the BSD operating system
that works under the hood on Mac OS X.

If you are serious about using Usenet and newsgroups in the future,
you should look into whether or not your ISP offers a Usenet server,
and if so, what software you'd like to use to connect to it.

William

 

Ahh - that's good news about PayPal. I will start using that for NIN
renewals instead. I feel like having signed up with yet another payment
mechanism (ClickandBuy)just puts my money at greater exposure (not that
there's anything wrong with ClickandBuy - it is, like I said, just one
*more* exposure for ID theft).

Coincidentally, just days from my signing up the first time with
ClickandBuy to join NIN, my credit card got used on the internet for
some unauthorized purchases. There may be absolutely *no* connection at
all, but it did make me more paranoid about exposure since I was in the
U.S. putting my info. into a European entity.

Pardon my ignorance - I've certainly heard the word "estuary", but I had
to look up its meaning - it's the part of a river just before it joins a
sea - generally wider than the upstream part of the river, gets tidal
effects, and is a mixture of fresh and salt water.

Thanks for the info. on the Thames/Putney.

 

I currently use MT-Newswatcher 3.5.2 on my Mac G4 with OS X.4.11 .
I tried Google groups for a while a few years ago, but found it clumsy
compared to a newsreader. I've used MT-Newsreader and it's previous
Newswatcher for many years- over 10.

To use a newsreader your ISP needs to support same. Mine provides
newsgroups for free.
Looks like Comcast doesn't provide newsgroups anymore.
I hope they dropped their fees! >

My ISP dropped newsreader binaries a few years ago, no loss as they are
available elsewhere.

Here's MT-Newswatcher, a later version than mentioned on that "slightly
out of date" Mac newsreader client site. http://www.smfr.org/mtnw/

 

Correction: The Thames IS NOT an estuary, it HAS an estuary (where it flows
into the Channel).

And, by the way, we now have something dubbed Estuary English. As far as I
can make out, it's a type of 'artificial' argot based on Cockney and Essex,
but spoken by those who normally speak 'proper' when they wish to sound
'working class'.

Can't check via google as I am abroad and on an analogue modem @ 42
kbps...would take too long.

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"
---

 

Shades of 'enry 'iggins.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

By George, 'e's got it!

Or should that be "By Bill...!?

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"
---

[...]

 

Ah, so. You are correct of course, since it is a long way from the
estuary part of the Thames to its head. I was 'overestimating' how far
west to call the estuary part.

The Thames in London (and Putney, which is the 'theme' here) is tidal in
its behavior, so I was thinking about the tidalness (tidyness?) of an
estuary (as opposed to a river_river) but according to the wikipedia's
notion of how far west the Thames estuary part goes, they arbitrarily
stop/delineate it at Canvey Island.

And then of course there's the effect of the Thames barrier and Teddington
lock & weir on all that tidal stuff. The Thames estuary is second only to
another English estuary, the Severn, in being the estuaries with the
highest tidal ranges in the world.

So, Putney is tidal but it isn't officially estuary -- maybe estuary-ish.

 

Nope, see the Bay of Fundy, Canada and it's estuaries, for higher tides.
There is even another Canadian location with higher tides than the Bay
of Fundy, see if you can find it. Tip; it's not an estuary, but a very
large channel into a very large body of water.

 

I excluded the Bay of Fundy in comparing tidal ranges of estuaries because
it was not classified as an estuary. It is a bay full of ocean water, it
isn't brackish, or have some other estuary traits.

But it certainly has extreme tidal ranges.

Its ranges are exceeded by Ungava Bay (some say) which is also not an
estuary, and Ungava doesn't get much credit because it is frozen so much
of the time.

The Leaf River empties into Ungava, and during spring tides, the tidal
range at its mouth is 56' or 17 m, so that might beat Fundy.

 

I reacted to your blanket statement about the Thames being an estuary. I
did not comment about the tidality (??) at Putney.

This heavy paper uses "tidality". Imperial College is in the MIT/Harvard
League, or should I say, as a graduate of IC, that MIT/Caltech/Harvard are
in the Imperial league...

http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/abstracts/2005annual_calgary/abstracts/wells.htm

More evidence for tidality

http://orca.cf.ac.uk/1301/

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cach...karayan.pps+tidality&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Nothing on tidalness...

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"