CAPTCHAs are living their last years, and an unprecedented alliance is burying them

▤ Summary

Cloudflare, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and Shopify have backed PACT, a new protocol meant to verify humans online without passwords, visual puzzles, or tracking. The article argues that bots now account for more web traffic than humans, which has pushed traditional CAPTCHA defenses toward obsolescence. It also highlights a tension between privacy-friendly verification and the risk that a few large platforms could control access to the web. Google’s separate Cloud Fraud Defense approach is presented as a more restrictive model that can block de-Googled devices and reinforce platform dependence. The piece concludes that the protocol is still early and that the bigger fight will be over who gets to issue trusted identity tokens.

▦ Linked Companies

Cloudflare

$1B+