Ask HN: Are others seeing Google's reCAPTCHA rejecting Firefox users?

70 points by Animats 2 days ago | 22 comments

Infinite Google ReCAPCHA loop trying to access archive.is using current Firefox from Linux. Just started today. Firefox is in "strict" mode. Disabled Privacy Badger for that site, and it didn't help. Tried private browsing, and it didn't help.

Is this part of Google's war against ad-blocking and non-Chrome browsers?

prirun 1 day ago |

I've used vultr.com for years with no problems. Recently it wouldn't let me login without solving a Google captcha. I tried private windows, etc and ended up having to cancel my Vultr account and ask for a refund. Fortunately I only used them to spin up test VMs and didn't have any production stuff running there.

I refuse to pay a company for service and then be required to identify motorcycles and traffic lights every time I sign in. I went a few rounds with Vultr customer service and they said (paraphrasing) "It's not something we can fix, you have to talk to Google about it". Right... Google forced you to put their captcha on your web site.

selcuka 1 day ago |

It's an archive.is issue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today#2026_attack_on_G...

gnabgib 1 day ago |

It doesn't work in Chrome either (please complete CAPTCHA/yes you're valid/repeat), it might be a config issue on archive.is (Firefox latest windows, Chrome 151 windows - guest/null profile on both) rather than a war move.

nosioptar 2 days ago |

Yup, I get stuck in a loop.

Sometimes the audio recaptcha works. But, most of the time I can't understand the garbled audio.

Closing the tab always resolves the problem.

adrian_b 1 day ago |

I do not think that this is Firefox specific, more likely is is something Linux specific.

For me, hCaptcha has stopped working immediately before last weekend, regardless of the site that uses it.

It goes in an infinite loop, despite solving correctly all challenges.

On Linux, I have tested with 2 browsers, Firefox and Vivaldi, and the browser did not make any difference. I do not use any ad blockers, nor any non-standard extension.

So I think that they deployed a version update last Friday, which for some reason is broken on Linux.

It would not be surprising if both hCaptcha and Google ReCAPCHA have made some similar changes, so now they are both broken on Linux.

Meanwhile, some other "Captcha" applications from other vendors, which are used on other sites, still work like before.

VCFundedGenYer 1 day ago |

I've seen weird situations where I'm objectively solving the captcha correctly yet it still doesn't recognize it as correct.

At this point captchas need to be completely removed everywhere. They aren't effective and just waste time.

deltoidmaximus 1 day ago | |

Captchas are often used as tarpits. They've already decided you're a bot based on other factors so you aren't getting in until you change those factors. I've seen this happen where I'm stuck in the loop and then change the VPN endpoint and get right in after one try.

KomoD 2 days ago |

archive.today doesn't use a real recaptcha, the cloudflare page isn't real either. it serves that as a punishment for using 1.1.1.1 DNS because the owner doesn't like that 1.1.1.1 doesn't send EDNS client subnets.

gruez 1 day ago | |

They're definitely trying to mimic the cloudflare captcha page, but...

>archive.today doesn't use a real recaptcha

How? It's loading the script from google, and the images/responses are from google to.

KomoD 1 day ago | | |

I recall that the 1.1.1.1 block page doesn't serve the real one,, but the challenge page that they serve normally does. Maybe I'm misremembering? or maybe they changed it.

foresto 1 day ago | |

What do you mean by "a real recaptcha"? I just went to an archive.is page, and it's trying to load a script from www.google.com. Doesn't Google still own reCAPTCHA?

selcuka 1 day ago | | |

> On 14 January 2026, it emerged that archive.today had silently modified its CAPTCHA page to send repeated requests to Gyrovague, thereby causing visitors to unwittingly contribute to a DDOS attack against the blog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today#2026_attack_on_G...

nora-puchreiner 1 day ago |

The open secret: the CAPTCHA wasn’t actually being checked against Google’s servers; any answer was accepted as correct – until yesterday, when someone armed with this knowledge launched an AI crawler. Now it’s being checked, so you’ll have to solve it.

europoorean 1 day ago |

Yes. I use Firefox in Linux, with or without private window. Switch to Chrome to test and voilà, all good.

realslimjd 1 day ago |

I frequently have this issue with Safari in private browsing.

KinetiNode 1 day ago |

Yes , it (somehow) worked for me when I used VPN for a few days before not working again

busymom0 1 day ago |

Not sure about Firefox but lately, if I access Google from Safari on my Mac with Apple's private relay on and private mode Safari, I get an endless captcha loop.

bflesch 1 day ago |

This has been happening since many months.

OutOfHere 6 hours ago |

PubMed and PMC use Recaptcha and it's atrocious. It never works with Firefox. It keeps looping even when filled correctly.

NIH support staff is even worse as they refuse to acknowledge the issue and reply with a scripted useless response.

If I remember correctly, Recaptcha doesn't work on GrapheneOS either which is a separate issue.

kotaKat 1 day ago |

Dunno, but is anyone else continuing to seem to get what feels like 3-4 minute reCaptcha challenges? I’m getting mentally exhausted having to try to solve the super blurry pick-the-streetlights they keep throwing at me in loops.

It feels like I have to go slowly through it only for it to eventually end in a “please try again” as I sit and wait ten seconds for each square to slowly fade in a new stupid bus for me to click.

How is this fair to the humans?

globalnode 1 day ago |

because of my privacy settings google search outright blocks me as a bot. the only way to search is through an intermediary like startpage. related because if it does give me the time of day i tend to then get endless captchas.