Security News > 2021 > May > Cloudflare launches campaign to ‘end the madness’ of CAPTCHAs
Cloudflare research engineer Thibault Meunier assumed that the average internet user sees a CAPTCHA once ever ten days and multiplied that by world's 4.6 billion internet users and Cloudflare's 32-second CAPTCHA-completion estimate to assert that humanity collectively spends 500 years every day completing CAPTCHAs.
Cloudflare will initially support three - YubiKeys, HyperFIDO keys; and Thetis FIDO U2F. "Completing this flow takes five seconds," Meunier asserts in a post on Cloudflare's blog.
Cloudflare will offer Cryptographic Attestation of Personhood on a limited basis in English-speaking regions to test the feasibility of its idea.
Meunier's post nods to the fact that some smartphones can now perform the same function as a security key but stops short of suggesting that Cloudflare will use them.
The Register fancies that could be a sticking point for Cloudflare's ideas, as physical security keys don't come cheap - we've struggled to find any under US$20 - and most are USB-A devices at a time when such ports are becoming less prevalent.
Does Cloudflare really think dongles are less painful than CAPTCHAS? Let us know in the Poll below.