Apple may kill CAPTCHAs

June 21, 2022

There are lots of things that are broken about the modern online experience -- cookie nag boxes, newsletter popups and autoplay videos are high on the list.

But perhaps there's nothing more annoying than CAPTCHAs.

Did you know that "CAPTCHA" stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"?

Yeah, neither did I.

Apple has a new proposal for killing them forever: Private Access Tokens.

Part of the iOS 16 beta, Private Access Tokens are privacy-friendly tokens that identify you as a human to participating websites.

Two big cloud computing providers have already signed on, and Apple is promoting the new system on its developer website.

The day that CAPTCHAs die can't come soon enough.

-- Leander Kahney, EIC.

Apple developed Automatic Verification to let iPhone, Mac and iPad users bypass those irritating CAPTCHA image tests that websites use to confirm that someone is a human and not a bot.

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On June 21, 2010, Apple releases the first version of iOS 4. It's a big step forward for iDevices.

Tweets o' the day

One more thing ...

"I saw a videotape that we weren't supposed to see. It was prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By watching the tape, we discovered that, at least as of a few years ago, every tactical nuclear weapon in Europe manned by U.S. personnel was targeted by an Apple II computer. Now, we didn't sell computers to the military; they went out and bought them at a dealer's, I guess. But it didn't make us feel good to know that our computers were being used to target nuclear weapons in Europe. The only bright side of it was that at least they weren't [Radio Shack] TRS-80s! Thank God for that." -- Steve Jobs

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