DOI: 10.5061/dryad.h70rxwdsr
title: Screenshots and metadata for 214 reCAPTCHA challenges encountered between September 2022 - September 2023

description: In Chapter 3 of my dissertation (tentatively titled " Becoming
 Users:Layers of People, Technology, and Power on the Internet. "), I
 describe how online user activities are datafied and monetized in subtle
 and often obfuscated ways. The chapter focuses on Google’s reCAPTCHA, a
 popular implementation of a CAPTCHA challenge. A CAPTCHA, or “Completely
 Automated Turning test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” is a simple
 task or challenge which is intended to differentiate between genuine human
 users and those who may be using software or other automated means to
 interact maliciously with a website, such as for spam, mass data scraping,
 or denial of service attacks. reCAPTCHA challenges are increasingly being
 hidden from direct view of the user, and instead assessing our mouse
 movements, browsing patterns, and other data to evaluate the likelihood
 that we are “authentic” users. These hidden challenges raise the stakes of
 understanding our own construction as Users because they obfuscate
 practices of surveillance and the ways that our activities as users are
 commodified by large corporations (Pettis, 2023). By studying the
 specifics of how such data collection works—that is, how we’re called upon
 and situated as Users—we can make more informed decisions about how we
 engage with the contemporary internet. This data set contains metadata for
 the 214 reCAPTCHA elements that I encountered during my personal use of
 the Web for the period of one year (September 2022 through September
 2023). Of these reCAPTCHAs, 137 were visible challenges—meaning that there
 was some indication of the presence of a reCAPTCHA challenge. The
 remaining 77 reCAPTCHAs were entirely hidden on the page. If I had not
 been running my browser extension, I would likely never have been aware of
 the use of a reCAPTCHA on the page. The data set also includes screenshots
 for 174 of the reCAPTCHAs. Screenshots that contain sensitive or private
 information have been excluded from public access. Researchers can request
 access to these additional files by contacting Ben Pettis
 &lt;bpettis@wisc.edu&gt;. A browsable and searchable version of
 the data is also available at https://capturingcaptcha.com
description: I developed a custom Google Chrome extension which detects when a
 page contains a reCAPTCHA and prompts the user to save a screenshot or
 screen recording while also collecting basic metadata. During Summer 2022,
 I began work on this website to collate and present the screen captures
 that I save throughout the year. The purpose of collecting these examples
 of websites where reCAPTCHAs appear is to understand how this Web element
 is situated within websites and presented to users, along with sketching
 out the frequency of their use and on what kinds of websites. Given that I
 will only be collecting records of my own interactions with reCAPTCHAs,
 this will not be a comprehensive sample that I can generalize as
 representative of all Web users. Though my experiences of the reCAPTCHA
 will differ from those of any other person, this collection will
 nevertheless be useful for demonstrating how the interface element may be
 embedded within websites and presented to users. Following Niels Brügger’s
 descriptions of Web history methods, these screen capture techniques
 provide an effective way to preserve a portion of the Web as it was
 actually encountered by a person, as opposed to methods such as automated
 scraping. Therefore my dissertation offers a methodological contribution
 to Web historians by demonstrating a technique for identifying and
 preserving a representation of one Web element within a page, as opposed
 to focusing an analysis on a whole page or entire website.
 The browser extension is configured to store data in a
 cloud-based document database running in MongoDB Atlas. Any screenshots or video recordings are uploaded to a Google Cloud Storage bucket. Both the database and cloud storage bucket are private and are restricted from direct access. The data and screenshots are viewable and searchable at https://capturingcaptcha.com. This data set represents an export of the database as of June 10, 2024. After this date, it is possible that data collection will be resumed, causing more information to be displayed in the online website.  The data was exported from the database to a single JSON file (lines format) using the mongoexport command line tool: <pre>mongoexport --uri mongodb+srv://[database-url].mongodb.net/production --collection submissions --out captcha-out.json --username [databaseuser]</pre>
description: # reCAPTCHAs
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h70rxwdsr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h70rxwdsr) ## Description of the data and file structure Metadata about the reCAPTCHAs is all stored in a single JSON file in the "JSON Lines" format. This means that every line of the file contains a single record. For example: ``` {"_id":"b4f256f6-7503-42d9-9a18-b60c2331a7c6","status":3,"timestamp":{"$date":"2022-08-20T13:54:33.574Z"},"original_filename":"Screen Shot 2022-08-20 at 8.53.53 AM.png","new_filename":"b4f256f6-7503-42d9-9a18-b60c2331a7c6.png","privacy":true,"website_name":"Esurance","website_url":"esurance.com","website_type":"financial","website_type_other":"","visible":true,"challenge_description":"\"Protected by reCAPTCHA\" logo in the bottom corner","challenge_time":0,"challenge_attempts":0,"additional_description":"","accept_terms":true,"_keywords":["bottom","by","com","corner","esurance","financial","in","logo","protected","recaptcha","the"],"updated_at":{"$date":"2022-08-22T02:03:34.569Z"}} ``` Each record contains several fields: * \_id - unique identifier for the record. This can be appended to [https://capturingcaptcha.com/submissions/](https://capturingcaptcha.com/submissions/) (e.g. [https://capturingcaptcha.com/submissions/6957d3f5-3aa5-4eea-9475-8be4cee74574](https://capturingcaptcha.com/submissions/6957d3f5-3aa5-4eea-9475-8be4cee74574)) to view online * status - a numeric code to represent the data processing status of the record * 1 Submitted, Pending Review (No File Uploaded) * 2 Submitted, Pending Review and File Scan * 3 Accepted Submission and File * 4 Accepted Submission (No File Uploaded) * 5 Withheld (hide entire submission from public website) * 6 Pending Deletion * 7 Possible Spam * timestamp - when the reCAPTCHA was submitted * original_filename - name of the file that was uploaded via the extension * new_filename - newly generated name for the file before it is stored in Cloud Storage * privacy * true - hide screenshot from public access * false - make screenshot public * website_name - human readable name of the source website * website_type - category of the website * website_type_other - if "Other" category was selected, this field contains a written description * challenge_description - written description of the type of reCAPTCHA challenge * challenge_time - estimated number of seconds to complete the reCAPTCHA challenge * challenge_attempts - number of attempts to successfully complete the reCAPTCHA challenge * additional_description - written description/additional notes * accept_terms - indicates whether I checked the "accept terms" box before submitting my screenshot * \_keywords - automatically generated keywords to improve website search functionality In addition to the JSON file, there is a directory containing public screenshot files. These files are named with the same value as "new_filename" in each record. ## Sharing/Access information Link to other publicly accessible locations of the data: * [https://capturingcaptcha.com](https://capturingcaptcha.com) ## Code/Software I created a browser extension to support internet researchers interested in user interactions with specific Web elements. The extension searches for a specified HTML element and invites users to record their screens if it is detected. This is an adaptation of the development I've done for a project I am working on that is specifically interested in the Google reCAPTCHA and users' interaction with these challenges. I've spun off this side project so that other researchers can use this approach in their own projects. Its code is available at: [https://github.com/bpettis/html-search-and-record](https://github.com/bpettis/html-search-and-record)