Encoding comes to bite us (again)

[yggdrasil]

I tried to replace Google reCaptcha today with something more private and customizable, the logic choice was hCaptch, and they even pay you for every solved puzzle.

Switching from reCaptcha to hCaptcha is very easy, all you need to do is replace the URL and some tags. Full instructions are here:

https://docs.hcaptcha.com/switch

I did this on my WHMCS installation, I replaced everything, twice. And double-checked. Trust me, I did replaced all tags, my IDE is excellent when it comes to search and replace.

Then I tested the domain register page and the hCaptcha works. Except you cannot submit the form after solving it. WHMCS gives the error in the console:

entityExtractionRuntime.disconnectMutationObserver();

It seems, again WHMCS has put something related Google reCaptcha behind PHP encoded files 🥵

 

 

[brian!]

8 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

It seems, again WHMCS has put something related Google reCaptcha behind PHP encoded files 🥵

https://requests.whmcs.com/topic/hcaptcha-alternative-to-recaptcha

Quote

3) You can earn money, or donate it, by visitors solving these problems.

someone from WHMCS in on the phone to them now trying to negotiate it as another income stream for MarketConnect. 🤑

[bear]

1 hour ago, brian! said:

https://requests.whmcs.com/topic/hcaptcha-alternative-to-recaptcha

someone from WHMCS in on the phone to them now trying to negotiate it as another income stream for MarketConnect. 🤑

lol, 3 votes, is under consideration. Other requests, dozens of votes, nothing. 
Market Connect, yeah, might be why. 😉

[DennisHermannsen]

59 minutes ago, bear said:

lol, 3 votes, is under consideration. Other requests, dozens of votes, nothing. 

To be fair, most accepted requests are set as "Under consideration". Exceptions are requests that are already possible, or requests that are denied straight away.

Edited February 19, 2021 by DennisHermannsen

[yggdrasil]

Well, there is the consideration that people are dropping Google and Facebook services like flies as more people value privacy online, this is particularly true it seems with European markets. I assume most of us here and most WHMCS customers are tech related, that means hosting, web design, development, IT, services, etc.

That is precisely the people that value privacy more than the regular Joe, as such it makes sense for WHMCS to offer Google alternatives. If you take a look at the code even Google fonts are included, which personally I think should be hosted locally, removed or at least give you the choice. Same with Analytics which I also have disabled. reCAPTCHA from Google is one of the most invasive tracking codes you can put on a website today.

There are real motivations to use something else like hCaptcha, plus they do seem to give more options and customizations as well. I know Cloudflare changed to them as well.

I had no problems interchanging reCaptcha with hCaptcha with other softwares, except WHMCS. I'm not even claiming they should add this a feature that is supported by them, just make WHMCS more open so that developers can do things like this which does not seem possible today. Its just replacing the URL and tags, its not rocket science but with WHMCS again this is not possible 😪