Tired Of CAPTCHAs? iOS16 Makes Us No More Dealing With Verification Hassle

JAKARTA – When iOS 16 comes out this fall, you may notice that you don't have to deal with a lot of annoying CAPTCHAs that ask you to shift puzzle pieces or tell the difference between hills and mountains.

That's because Apple has introduced a new feature for iPhone and Mac called Automatic Verification, which tells some sites that you're not a bot without having to do anything. This new feature first appeared from MacRumors.

Apple has worked with two major content delivery networks, Fastly and Cloudflare, to develop the system. When launched with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, sites that use one of the services to defend themselves against spam should be able to take advantage of the system and stop showing you lots of CAPTCHAs.

If you notice how many sites go down when Fastly or Cloudflare starts having issues, then you'll know it's a part of the congested internet that might become significantly less intrusive. Especially for those who view CAPTCHAs more often than average because they use a VPN or delete their cookies frequently.

While this is far from the first attempt to get rid of CAPTCHAs, Apple's attempt is a. The underlying system, which Apple calls a Private Access Token, is vaguely reminiscent of its system for changing passwords.

Here's a very simple idea of how it works. First, your device looks at various factors to determine if you are a human. When you open a website that normally asks you to fill out a CAPTCHA, the site may ask your phone or computer if a human is using it. If your device says yes, then you will be allowed in.

If you want to go into details about the technology, you can watch Apple's WWDC session on it, as well as read Apple Insider's explanation, and read Fastly's article on this subject.

Like most new technologies it offers, Apple has a privacy story to follow. The company says that while your Apple ID is used as proof that you are a real person, your phone or computer does not transmit data, such as your email address or phone number, associated with it.

The only thing the site gets is what is basically a thumbs up from Apple. Similarly, Apple only knows that your device asks it to confirm if you're human, they don't get the info on who wants to know.

Fortunately for both Android and Windows users, Apple isn't the only one working on this technology. According to Fastly, Google is also helping to develop it, and the concept of having a trusted party guarantee that you're a human is being built into internet standards.

Google started building a similar system into Chrome about two years ago and while it seems to be mostly focused on third-party publishers instead of doing the verification itself, users can definitely look to it to build a system similar to Apple's for its users on the phone.