Web Browsers

[Doc Holliday]

Is anyone else having issues with Google repeatedly asking if they are a robot? I've experienced it a few times in the past couple of days and it's really starting to hack me off so I Googled why Google keeps asking me if I'm a robot? The answer... It is their AI software learning to tell the difference between human and automated/automatic responses. 

Someone mentioned to me the other day that I shouldn't be using Google if I valued my privacy to any degree and suggested Firefox. I think there is another called NordVPN which bangs on about security and privacy driven browsing. I just wondered what others thought. 

Thanks.

[Humblepie]

Yep being having exactly the same with Google. I have stopped using it now and use anything other than it 

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, yes me to, think I am a robot after many requests😀

[hawkfanz]

use firefox much better

[udderlyoffroad]

You're conflating browsers with search engines.

Do you mean you're using Google Chrome as your browser?  And when you use the google search engine, on Chrome, you get the robot question?  Have you tried a different browser?

NordVPN is just that, a VPN service, which although I've not used it, should be browser agnostic.

[grrclark]

As per above, Firefox is a good choice of browser that offers a lot of privacy control.

If you want to use a different search engine that does not track and record your history then use DuckDuckGo.

[sportsbob]

It may help if you cleared your cache and browsing history , you can adjust the settings to do this every time you close the browser . You can add -incognito in the command line for chrome so it always starts in incognito mode.  Brave browser stops the intrusive adds and pop ups that blight users of Chrome (quite notably on this site) and can also be ran in private mode. Certain viruses will cause unusual traffic so it may be worth doing a scan, also if you use a VPN some search engines will think you are a robot due to the amount of encrypted traffic going through particular servers. As you can see there are many potential reasons for what you describe and if you cant deal with it yourself then perhaps going to your independent PC repair shop might be a way forward.                                      

[Westward]

I never got on with Chrome, but in honesty I didn't try too hard to get used to it so I used Firefox for years as a better browser than Internet Explorer. Over the years it's got bigger, fatter and more resource hungry and on my PC, page loading would just get slower and slower until the internet became unusable. A full restart would bring it back to life but only for a couple of days. I now use Edge and it reminds me of the good old days with Firefox. It's fast, slick and fairly straightforward to learn, but it's Microsoft and everything's geared toward them just as Chrome is geared toward Google. Not only that but I've no doubts they'll keep fiddling with it and adding new features that I don't want until it becomes as bloated and sluggish as everything else they produce.

I'm about to investigate the increasing popular Brave browser which is free from the dead hands of Google or Microsoft and written in the Chromium language so it's fast and it also seems to have everything built in so no need for extensions. 

[udderlyoffroad]

19 hours ago, Westward said:

page loading would just get slower and slower until the internet became unusable. A full restart would bring it back to life but only for a couple of days.

This is standard behaviour!  All browsers 'memory leak' to some extent, Chrome used to be bad for it but has got better after recent updates.

People who leave lots of tabs open and only ever let their computer go to sleep (and dont shutdown at the end of the day) will suffer from this, and it's pretty unsurprising.  It's poor 'housekeeping' and should be avoided. The whole Windows, browser stack just isn't designed to run 24/7. 

 

Nevertheless, I suspect there's something else going on here, which is adding to your problem

19 hours ago, Westward said:

which is free from the dead hands of Google or Microsoft and written in the Chromium language so it's fast and it also seems to have everything built in so no need for extensions. 

Hmm, what extensions are you running?  A poorly behaved one could be contributing to your issues.

 

[Westward]

Thanks for responding but with all due respect I know what I'm doing with PCs. I worked in the computer industry for almost 50 years and received the first ever IBM PC (outside of IIBM themselves) that arrived in the UK.

As for extensions I run the same 2 with Edge that I ran with Firefox. Also, after Win 10 has been shut down, the subsequent power up and start up routine is not the same as a restart, which is why Firefox performance deteriorated day by day. The only (temporary) cure was full restart.