Tell HN: In NSW, if Google doesn't track you, you can't pay Public School fees

129 points

8 years ago

I have recently enabled the "resistFingerprinting" option in Firefox[1], in order to prevent tracking based on browser fingerprinting. However I have found out that once I've done that, Google's reCAPTCHA becomes almost impossible to solve.

Normally I wouldn't care too much about Google, the problem is that in Australia, reCAPTCHA is used by Westpac bank, for processing payments on behalf of the Department of Education of New South Wales. In other words, you can't pay your child's public school fees online, unless you agree to Google tracking you.

How to test:

create a form with reCAPTCHA or just use a pre-existing one like [2], then try and solve the reCAPTCHA while resistFingerprinting is set to false (default setting)[1]. Now change it to true, and try to solve the reCAPTCHA once again.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...

[2] https://patrickhlauke.github.io/recaptcha/

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