**bleep** Why do I have to play silly games just to read my bill

[vginforum]

Why do I need a knowledge of north American street furniture to read my Virginmedia bill?

Even if it needed mega-security (it doesn't) no grown-up business should use Re-Captcha

[Ashleigh_C]

Hi there @vginforum 

Thank you so much for your post and I'm so sorry to hear you are feeling frustrated by the security system.

Can I ask if you are experiencing any faults at all or are you able to log in to view your bills? 

Thank you. 

[asim18 · Accepted solution]

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@vginforum wrote:

no grown-up business should use Re-Captcha

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Haha I totally agree. Nobody should use re-captcha. 

"Click the Lamp posts" and there's ALWAYS one square with half a lamp post or half a crosswalk and you're not sure whether to click it or not. Then it declines you, and then you are forced to work for them for free. Google getting lots of free labour, imagine all the man hours they are getting for free, helping their AI systems grow.

[vginforum]

I don't know if I'm experiencing any faults as I can't be bothered playing the silly game so I haven't viewed my bill. Two utilities send me their bills as .pdf attachments, only Virginmedia force me to play a stupid game

PS Amusing to see that my F-F-S in original subject gets censored ‌😄‌

[用心棒]

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@vginforum wrote:

Why do I need a knowledge of north American street furniture to read my Virginmedia bill?

Even if it needed mega-security (it doesn't) no grown-up business should use Re-Captcha

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If appropriate, consider completing the audio challenge instead; most challenges require one word from that spoken and you can enter similar sounding but wrong words should you feel mischievous.

Alas Google does what it does best and exploits under the guise of benevolence. ReCaptcha facilitates their need to pre-process data that is expensive and/or complex to machine process alone by making humans do the work. The benefit to Google is clear and to the service provider in the form of a free solution for their security issue, i.e. only humans can interact with service and/or stop brute force / credential stuffing attacks, but to the user not so IMHO.

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[vginforum]

I don't want ANY "bleeping" challenge so I can see who I spent £1.58 calling!

And as I spend a great deal of time and effort trying to avoid anything to do with Google in the rest of my miserable life I don't want to have to be beholden to them to read a "bleeping" phone bill.

Virginmedia should just get rid of it.

[Steve1701]

Hey, vginforum,

I honestly don't think you are going to win this one 🙄

Virgin Media, like many other companies, allow these 'tests' and despite complaints, continue to. I seem to remember someone explaining what they're all about, but for the life of me, I can't be bothered trying to remember.

They are not about to simply stop using the likes of ReCaptcha .... TBH: I've no idea why they need to use this crap, and I 100% agree with you that it's ridiculous that it's allowed in the first place.

But, I think it's a case of 'bite the bullet' and privately give em the middle finger 🖕

(I would like to see what excuses they come up with next though lol)

[newapollo]

@vginforum 

You have a choice, free online billing and print out a PDF of the bill, or pay £1.50 extra a month for paper billing.

[vginforum]

I have the same choice with my utility company. The difference is they send me the .pdf without my having to indulge in childish games to view it. It just comes with the emails. And who would print out a bill?? I'd just like to look at it without the silly stuff.
Despite what Virginmedia defenders here say, there is no excuse for using Re-captcha. I think Steve1701 gets it, newapollo doesn't

[Andrew-G]

@vginforum Despite what Virginmedia defenders here say, there is no excuse for using Re-captcha.

I hate them too, and particularly the sh*te selection of low resolution US-centric images I have to wade through.  I suspect that ReCraptcha is offered "free" to companies, and anything that is cheap or free is wildly attractive to Virgin Media's senior managers, irrespective of the impact that has on customer experience.  Having said that, the purpose of reCraptcha for VM is to stop trial and error "harvesting" of accounts by "bots", and if it works, then potentially it is an inconvenience we have to live with.  Any victim of ID theft will tell you how distressing that is, and often it is thanks to an online account being hacked by bot software. 

I'd prefer VM to focus on less cumbersome approaches, which might include blocking login attempts from non-VM IP addresses (unless the customer actively chooses to allow it), along with monitoring of attempts to access multiple accounts from a single IP address.  Couple that with IPv6 which makes IP spoofing far more difficult, and that should be more secure than the modest security of captchas (I'd imagine there's darkweb services that attempt to offer a bot solution to captchas, and that only has to be even 5-10% accurate to make it worthwhile for the criminals). There's a good selection of other ways of stopping bot logins, I can't see that VM care enough to bother.