Are You A Robot? Walmart Wants To Know By Using reCAPTCHA

Software such as reCAPTCHA is used to detect if you are a robot and to keep robots out. This is because in the digital times we live in, unfortunately some bad people use programs of code called “bots” to do malicious things on them internets. I’m all for this as I use reCAPTCHA software on this very site as it helps it from getting overflooded with spam, and it does an excellent job at it. Software such as reCAPTCHA does have its place in forums, comments sections, and so forth but doesn’t seem to fit in all websites, especially retail sites (at least in my opinion). That’s what leads me to this post, for on several occasions I have been asked by Walmart if I am a robot. Five times to be exact in just the last few days! (At time of writing) I thought once was strange but yet Walmart continues to question if I am a human or a bot.

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Has this happened to any of you, has Walmart prompted you to use reCAPTCHA to determine if you are a human? This is the first time I have ever seen a reCAPTCHA in a retail site and I wonder if this will start a new trend of other retail sites asking you to prove you are human.

EDIT:

I did a quick google search on the subject and it seems one reason Walmart might be using reCAPTCHA could be due to PS5 preorder bots. The PS5 seems to be out of stock at Walmart and even other places like Amazon do not have any normal priced units in stock. Amazon does sell the PS5, however at ridiculous scalper prices of the low low price of $1,599 and up (at time of writing). It seems people are using bots to help them find fresh stock and while this might not do any harm to websites themselves, bots for these purposes may be considered as an unfair advantage to the average consumer working hard to find a particular hard to find item using normal means and Walmart might be using reCAPTCHA to even the playing field, but that’s a whole different topic.

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