Why is Google making me click on "I am not a robot" and then more clicking on photos that match certain criteria?

People can write programs that use a web site, they don’t want that, it’s a site designed for individual users.

For example, I use a site where I look up property histories – deeds, mortgages, etc.

If they let bots use it, they would programmatically go through the data property by property and vacuum up the county database.

The system would slow to a crawl, and become unusable for everyone else.

Or you could write a program that tried to guess user names and password to break into accounts.

By placing a captcha on the page that can’t be completed programmatically, they assure the site is used by individuals, not abused by programmers.

My apologies if you knew this already. Why Google specifically is challenging you, I don’t know. I assume someone is abusing the site.

Because Google is a robot.

Do you mean on a google site such as search or gmail or on a random sites?

The picture thing is a captcha any site can use and is a service provided by google. If it is actually on one of googles sites it could be due to something like you are using a VPN.

For example, before I typed in a search for “enamel tea pot“because I wanted to look at some on Amazon. Maybe it was “Amazon enamel tea pot,” I am not sure. Anyway, then it sent me to the “I am not a robot” thing.

Are you logged into Google/Gmail?

Are you using a different computer than usual?

Not logged into Gmail. Using same computer as every day.

Could be that your modem was issued a new IP so that is confusing it on where/who you are. The new IP could appear to be in a place that geographically different to the old IP since that can change a lot.

I get the captcha if I switch to a VPN that is in a different state. They wonder how I moved 1000 miles in 5 minutes.

edit :: I would visit https://www.iplocation.net/ and see if the location is accurate.

Thank you for that, @johnpowell. I just looked at the link and the location is accurate.

Security.