Proton, the Swiss company that develops privacy-focused online services such as email, has developed its very own CAPTCHA service to help discern between
I already have a very good privacy-respecting email provider (Runbox). But if I was on the market for one, this post instantly disqualifies Proton for me.
Captchas need to die a fiery death, and the motherfuckers who foist it on me can go fuck themselves with a wire brush, regardless of whether the captchas are from Google, hCaptcha or anybody else. I'm not paying for that garbage.
Ask questions for a personalized answer like you get on Lemmy sign ups. A human will have to verify each request, or.... you can put an AI bot to judge whether your response is botlike or human.
Require you to sign in and verify yourself with a valid identity
Require you to sign in and pay to use whatever
All options I can think of without captcha are either unscalable or require you to give up privacy.
My email provider, Runbox, doesn't seem to think fucking captchas are necessary. There isn't a single one in sight anywhere on their pages and services. How come?
Capchas are often hidden, only bothering the user when they're not suspected to be a human. Popularity might also play a role. I've personally never heard of Runbox, maybe they're not big enough to attract bots? Also possible that they're a paid email provider?