Has Google gone mad?

[Koldov]

Well, I guess it had to happen... Google has gone quite bonkers... I was always sure sucking up and absorbing all the 'data' humans create on the internet would do that eventually...

 

Anyway, I've gone to sign in to my Google account this morning and been 'challenged'... not a 2FA/re-auth/Login Challenge/Verify-it's-you Challenge...

 

But a reCAPTCHA and an old style legacy/fallback v1 at that (a box with warped letters and numbers that you need to type out).

 

 

Other than the fact that it's reasonably difficult to read, there's no 'refresh to another word' button to click...

 

However, there is a speaker icon that should read it to you... how does this work with a completely randomised bunch of letters made to look like a word? It's completely made up so how can it be recorded and read out intelligibly...?

 

I was curious so I clicked on it... now you can too!

 

>>>>>>>             HAS GOOGLE GONE MAD?!

 

OK, so maybe not mad, I know it's just a glitch (in the Matrix), but seriously we've never had this before. Is it new? Is it something to do with traffic/suspicious behaviour?

 

My concern is that it happens to our pupils in a lesson, some of younger kids are just not going to get through it!

Edited September 18, 2025 by Koldov

[paulkerton]

20 minutes ago, Koldov said:

Is it new? Is it something to do with traffic/suspicious behaviour?

Yes, this is EXACTLY what it is. They've seen a bunch of traffic and suspicious behaviour coming their way from your external IP address, so this kicks in, in an attempt to protect Google from that traffic.

[TwistedHelixis]

We had this last year. Seemed to sort itself out.

[mthomas08]

41 minutes ago, TwistedHelixis said:

We had this last year. Seemed to sort itself out.

 

Yeah we had this the year before.

 

It does fix itself...  annoying yes..   nothing people can do..   Tell staff to blame Google and leave it be. Annoying but we can't do anything about it unless you ask people to cut the Google traffic.

Edited September 18, 2025 by mthomas08

[Koldov]

Thing is, as a school we are not really a very heavy Google user.

 

We're a small school and only use the odd bit of Google Workspace, like GMail and Classroom but certainly nothing that would cause a lot of traffic.

 

If it is suspicious, is there anywhere in the platform I can check these things? Nothing like that is showing in the 'Alert Centre'....

 

Can't be that difficult for them to chuck together an automated email to the Super Admin, saying "hey something's up!"

 

EDIT: 3rd time I've been called to the ICT Suite so far...

Edited September 18, 2025 by Koldov