Google just asked me to solve a captcha for something I searched for. Like it thought I was a robot for searching "appveyor {build}". (I"m searching for info on appveyor handlebars and what I can put in them.) "Google has detected suspicious network activity from this address" or some such.<p>I didn't just have to click "I'm not a robot", either, though I don't block cookies. I had to full on pick which pictures weren't pictures of stairs.<p>Does this happen frequently for some folks? Any way to avoid it? I'm just fascinated that it happened.
I see it very often when using VPNs, both including needing to select pictures and it just letting me through immediately. I find it happens less when you are actually logged into a Google account. It doesn't completely prevent them, but Google will "trust" you more.
Always when I'm using a VPN. It doesn't matter how many times I solve their puzzles it literally won't let me through half the time - I guess they've figured anonymous users are a waste of server resources.<p>When not working I'm forced to use a mix of duckduckgo, Bing and Yandex as I refuse to disable my VPN for Google.