I get a CAPTCHA image from google saying too much network traffic
I am a single, home user who, 2 days ago, began getting a CAPTCHA image where I am supposed to type in the letters to prove I'm not a robot. Sometimes I get a 2nd, or 3rd, image afterwards! I am a solitary home user, not on a network, and actually using internet, and google, less frequently than the past. I ran antispy, antivirus and they find nothing! I am on Hughesnet Satellite. Google next asked for my IP address & contact info--but I don't even know if it IS google! How can I stop this image typing request, it is really getting ANNOYING.
All Replies (2)
Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).
- Don't make any changes on the Safe mode start window.
- https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
It's not malware, it's your ISP rerouting your searches to a shadow server pretending to be Google. I had this problem with Earthlink and changed my DNS to Google's open DNS and when I confronted Earthlink about this they flat out lied. I cancelled my Earthlink account and switched to a different ISP.
From a Google forum: Hi, everyone. I want to assure you that at Google we are following this very closely, and trying to get Frontier to fix the issue.
The root of the problem is that your ISP is intercepting some traffic, so when you try to use Google your search actually goes through an ISP server first. Google's systems detect this and identify the unusual traffic patterns as abuse, which triggers the captchas. The captchas will go away as soon as the ISP stops intercepting traffic intended for Google.
Are they really intercepting traffic?
I know you don't want to just take my word for it, and there could be others reading this forum with a different problem, so here's how you can see the interception for yourself:
1) Open a terminal window (on Windows use Start -> Run -> cmd) and run the following command (same on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux):
nslookup www.google.com
You will see lots of output, something like:
C:\> nslookup www.google.com Server: Wireless_Broadband_Router.ftrdhcpuser.net Address: 192.168.1.1
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.google.com
Address: 184.16.37.219
2) Take that final IP address (in the above example 184.16.37.219) and put it into the search box at a site like http://whois.domaintools.com/ -- in this example the resulting page is http://whois.domaintools.com/184.16.37.219 and it has the following text about half-way down:
OrgName: Frontier Communications of America, Inc.
So that shows that Frontier is intercepting traffic to www.google.com to point to their own servers (if it were a Google IP you'd see OrgName: Google Inc.).
You can try checking other websites (just repeat steps 1 and 2) to see if they are being intercepted also.
What can you do?
1) You may choose to complain to your ISP so they now the impact this is having on their users. If they stop intercepting traffic intended for Google, then the problem will be solved. Unfortunately the interception is a business decision, not a systems error.
2) While you wait for them to fix it, you can also stop using their DNS servers. Instead, you could use free DNS servers provided by Google (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/). Instructions for changing your computer's settings are at http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html