Mozilla blames recaptcha issue in Firefox on Google

Mozilla confirmed a recaptcha problem within the group’s Firefox internet browser yesterday night.

Affected Firefox customers see a spinning animation once they attempt to clear up the captcha, which implies that they’re unable to take action. The result’s that they can not entry the web site or service. A workaround is out there.

The difficulty impacts all main variations of Firefox for Home windows which might be supported by Mozilla in addition to older variations. This contains Firefox 125, the present secure model of Firefox, the event variations 126 and 127, and in addition Firefox ESR 115.

Mozilla says that the problem is just not brought on by adjustments that it made to Firefox. As an alternative, it believes that Google is the offender and it makes the next factors to again this up:

The difficulty impacts new and previous Firefox installations alike. It impacts Firefox ESR, Firefox Steady, and in addition Firefox releases that have been launched final 12 months and are not supported.
Altering the person agent to Firefox for Linux or Chrome for Home windows makes the captchas work once more.
Altering the person agent of Chrome to Firefox for Home windows breaks the captchas in Chrome as properly.

Workaround for the Firefox captcha problem

Firefox customers who run into the problem could resolve it within the following manner:

Sort about:config within the Firefox handle bar.
Seek for normal.useragent.override.
Change to String and activate the add-icon.
Copy and paste the next string into the sphere: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:125.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/125.0.
Click on on the edit icon subsequent to the road to save lots of the change.

Firefox identifies as Firefox for Linux now. You might also use a distinct person agent, e.g., that for Chrome for Home windows.

Notice: you could need to delete the entry once more as soon as the problem is fastened.

Closing Phrases

Supplied that Mozilla’s evaluation of Google being the offender is right, it highlights a significant problem. Google, being additionally one of many major opponents of Mozilla, has additionally management over massive fashionable Web companies.

This contains web sites comparable to Google Search, Gmail, or YouTube, but additionally behind-the-scenes companies comparable to recaptcha. Even unintentional adjustments could have extreme penalties for Firefox and different competing browsers, particularly if they don’t use Chromium because the core.

Take a look at the bug report for added details about the problem and fixes.

Do you utilize Firefox? Have you ever skilled points with captchas just lately?

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