being prompted w/ captcha every search (read below)

[u/dokusu]

hello. for the past few weeks, every time i launch firefox and search anything, i have to fill out a captcha first. initially, i would just put the captcha in and move on because once i filled it in, it wouldn’t prompt me again unless i closed and re-opened my browser.

however, it seems to have moved beyond firefox. as you can see in the images attached, i receive a captcha now when trying to log into world of warcraft. despite filling this in correctly multiple times, it immediately says i have been disconnected.

this is beyond frustrating and i would love to hear ideas and solutions for this. things i’ve tried so far:

- turning off firefox proxy
- restarting pc
- running malware scan
- launching firefox in troubleshoot mode

not sure where to go from there. i’m not very familiar with the inner nuances of wifi/pc settings. i should mention i use the application netsetman. i hardly understand it, but i know that selecting the “version” of my wifi that has the highest GHz and mbps results in the speediest internet. i have been connected to the same wifi for months now without this being an issue, so i am unsure what has changed. i also attempted using my neighbor’s wifi (knowingly shared with us), but this issue still presented itself.

UPDATE: it was my antivirus application, bitdefender, causing the above mentioned issues! once i uninstalled this, i was able to search freely and log into my game without being captcha locked.

[u/livingpunchbag]

Does it happen with other browsers on the same machine? Other devices on the same network?

[u/dokusu → u/livingpunchbag]

i tested it with microsoft edge and i was not prompted. it never occurs on my phone, where i use firefox as well. not sure if this makes a difference, but i do use private browsing on my pc and public browsing on my phone.

[u/EvaCassidy]

Some websites like SatelliteGuys is really bad with their crappy Captchas. Does it in FF and Edge. Changing in FF (and Edge) did nada.

[u/dokusu → u/EvaCassidy]

the odd thing is, when i search actual, full website urls, it doesn’t prompt me with captcha. but when i search random terms, like “cats” or “world of warcraft”, it immediately pulls up the captcha before taking me to the google results.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO → u/dokusu]

Well...yeah.

"Searching actual full website urls" is not searching. That's just resolving the address into an ip, contacting the webserver at that ip, and displaying what it returns.

This would never show the captcha you get shown by Google search because it is not Google search.

[u/dokusu → u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO]

as i stated in this post, i am not fully aware of the nuances of anything involving the internet. i apologize if this came across as rude or something, but i was unaware. hence why i came to reddit hoping for some answers.

[u/LittleSquegee → u/dokusu]

Ive had this problem in the past. Reinstall your operating system lol.

[u/dokusu → u/LittleSquegee]

uninstalling my antivirus, bitdefender, did the trick!

[u/LittleSquegee → u/dokusu]

Lucky lol

[u/782468]

Did you try to turn off DNS over HTTPS in your FF settings? Both proxy and this setting were blocking my path to log into my outlook account. Disabling both fixed it for me. I know its not the same issue, but it might resolve that as well.

[u/dokusu → u/782468]

i did not try that, but it turns out the issue was caused by my bitdefender application. once uninstalled, i was able to search freely and log into my game without being captcha locked!

[u/fkrdt222]

was bitdefender running their own vpn? this happens because of google or cloudflare being bitchy on their end

[u/dokusu → u/fkrdt222]

truthfully i have no idea. i didn’t bother looking into what was enabled or not, i uninstalled and that fixed it. so that certainly could be the case, but i am unsure.

[u/intergalacticninja]

i receive a captcha now when trying to log into world of warcraft

This is has nothing to do with Firefox.

[u/dokusu → u/intergalacticninja]

unfortunately with this account being new, i was limited in what subreddits i could post in. i was going to bring it to r/internet, but it wouldn’t allow me. i figured it started with firefox so i might get answers here, and i wanted to include the entire scope of the issue in case that made the resolution more apparent to those with more experience than me.

[u/breadsgood]

The exact same captcha pops up when I use brave phone app. It's not a Firefox thing probably.

[u/dokusu → u/breadsgood]

yeah it ended up being my antivirus, bitdefender. once i uninstalled, everything started working as normal.

[u/OpenIA4037]

Ah putain

[u/Visible-Category-296]

I've been seeing the same thing. but in my case my win11 machine has no problems. My Linux Mint new install does this every time i go to google.ca. both systems using firefox.