reCaptcha no Captcha is working fine except for iPhones and iPads

[Colin Jones]

we have a strange reCapcha issue in our environment.

On the face of it, it seems to work in 'no Captcha' mode for a wide array of devices, OS and browser. However, we seem to get almost systematically challenged on most iDevice. IPhone/iPad, 9.0.2, 9.3.0 & 9.3.1 sometimes with Safari and not Google as the browser, sometimes the other way around.

Is there anything you can advise that we can try do resolve this asap?

[Colin Jones]

Further info on our use case - this link will take you to the landing page which the reCaptcha is on https://my.service.nsw.gov.au/register/

We have tested on Windows 7/8/8.1/10 desktops/laptops/Surface Pros, using IE10/11/Edge/Chrome, Android (various) Chrome/Samsung browser, ChromeOS v50, iPhone/Pad v9.0.3/9.3/9.3.1 using Chrome and Mobile Safari, on all sorts of Internet connections (4G/ADSL/Cable/corporate networks/hotspots)

All seem to work fine with Nocaptcha reCaptcha, just the check box, except the iDevices. at least 80% of them either go to a puzzle challenge on Safari, or Chrome, or both, and is repeatable every time on that browser and phone/pad, even after rebooting and flushing cache/cookies.

Any thoughts??

[Colin Jones]

These are the stats so far - 60 tests on different machines, browsers, OS and locations/networks - all non-iDevices get Nocaptcha. Around 50% of iDevice tests get challenged!

Simple, single challenge	iPad	3
	iPhone	4
Simple, single challenge Total		7
Tick only, no further challenge	Android phone	9
	Android tablet	1
	ChromeOS	1
	iPad	4
	iPhone	10
	Mac	8
	Windows	11
	Windows 10	6
	Windows 8	1
	Windows 8.1	1
Tick only, no further challenge Total		52

[Colin Jones]

Copying reCaptcha's reply and my response here, to keep the thread going for reference:
Dear reCaptcha

Thanks for your reply. Not sure if to reply to this email, or in the Google Group, as your post didn't appear there.

For clarity, the experience and tests I've provided are not in our test environment. It is our production environment. We have our team (around 30 different people so far) access the production environment in exactly the same way our customers do. They are doing this from their own personal devices, at home, their parent's home, friends and neighbours etc! So there's no difference between their experience and our customers.

The experience that really stands out as a binary thing is, Windows, Mac, Android, ChromeOS all get the nocaptcha completely consistently. There have been no unexplained instances so far were they get challenged with a puzzle. The experience from both iPhone and iPad is radically different under exactly the same circumstances (same people, same home broadband, same steps etc) at least 50% of instances are getting challenged with a puzzle. The difference is night and day.

Some people have the same issue consistently on the same iDevice irrespective of whether they use Chrome or Safari, some only get the issue on one browser and not the other, or the other way around. But those same people, in the same locations, don't get that experience on their home PC/Mac/Android device.

I cannot see how this can be reCaptcha itself, or it would be a huge problem for all your customers, so I'm assuming we've implemented incorrectly.

Have you any suggestions at all for how we can troubleshoot, or modify our implementation to capture some diagnostic logging that might explain it. Happy to provide authority to look inside our admin console, but there's nothing in there that obviously explains this behaviour. And only 2 keys.

Rgds
Colin

Colin Jones | Service NSW

Director Technology Operations and Delivery

Level 4, 255 George St,

Sydney NSW 2000

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Hi Colin,

Thanks for sharing your reports.

The No CAPTCHA experience is dynamic and decided by our risk analysis engine based on many clues.The percentage of No CAPTCHA that normal users see could be very different from what you got in the testing environment. The reCAPTCHA admin console shows more detailed data in the bar graphs, you can compare the numbers if your site has different keys.

Hope it helps.