Whether we're trying to just log in and check our emails or do some online shopping, we've all thoughtlessly clicked on the innocent-looking 'I am not a Robot' button that pops up on various websites.
While almost every internet user is familiar with clicking all the squares containing traffic lights or typing out a wiggly code four times before realizing the 'O' is actually a '0', it seems that very few of us know what the 'I am not a robot' button does. But in today's age of fake social media accounts and the dreaded "bots", it's pretty important that we comply, right?
Well, when a clip from the TV show QI resurfaced on TikTok explaining the tick box's mysterious function, it was unsurprising that many people were shocked - and that many more of them weren't happy.
In the episode of the UK panel show, host Sandi Toksvig informed the celebrity guests and viewers watching at home that ticking the box actually invites a website to inspect your internet browsing history in an effort to see if you are, in fact, not a robot.
"Ticking the box is not the point. It's how you behaved before you ticked the box that is analyzed," Toksvig explained. Watch the full explanation below:
She continued: "Broadly speaking, you tick the box and it prompts the website to check your browsing history. So let us say, for example, before you tick the box you watched a couple of cat videos and you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg, you checked your Gmail account before you got down to work – all of that makes them think that you must be a human."
"Checking the box can even spur it to analyze the way in which you moved your mouse across screen," Sandi added, saying: "It's slightly spooky."
The clip was shared on TikTok by Aussie radio hosts Fitzy and Wippa. They included their astonished responses in the video, which has racked up over 5 million views.
"I had no idea," one said, while the other replied: "This really disappoints me."
People in the comments section were no less shocked by the knowledge, with one person writing: "That feels illegal."
Another added how it felt "like an invasion of privacy".
"You mean I got to also delete my browser history before clicking I'm not a robot," a third person commented. A fourth chimed in: "What's her source?? (I don't want to believe this)."
Although some social media users were questioning the validity of the show's claims, it appears that Toksvig is correct. Medium.com goes into more detail about how and why the process is important, explaining:
"Google will analyze your behavior before, during, and after clicking the checkbox to determine whether you appear human. This analysis might include everything from your browsing history (malicious bots don’t necessarily watch a few YouTube videos and check their Gmail before signing up for a bank account), to the way you organically move your mouse on the page."
At times, some of us may then be prompted to complete a CAPTCHA test to further determine the truth over whether or not you are a living, breathing human being.
And these are used for several reasons, such as the fact that humans can better recognize distorted characters over a robot, or that we are better are drawing on the context of what the characters in the skewed word should be - kinda like how we all know what "a***ole" means, even though I've replaced three of the letters with an asterisk.
Cybersecurity experts Cloudflare has also explained how curser movement and cookies are all addressed by just a few clicks of a box, stating: "Even the most direct motion by a human has some amount of randomness on the microscopic level: tiny unconscious movements that bots can't easily mimic.
"If the cursor's movement contains some of this unpredictability, then the test decides that the user is probably legitimate. The reCAPTCHA also may assess the cookies stored by the browser on a user device and the device's history in order to tell if the user is likely to be a bot."
So there you have it - who knew we had to divulge so much information just to prove we're not robots?
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