Project Euler Forum

I find it very annoying that PE now uses captcha "protection" which serves only to increase page load time. I get this message whenever I use the site from behind a VPN:

To help us keep this website secure, please wait while we verify you're not a robot! It will only take a few seconds...

Is this really necessary to keep the site secure?

This also happens while writing a post in a solution thread, every time you try to preview your post if more than a minute or two has elapsed since the last time you saw this annoying message.

Sorry, but that is not something I have added. It's happening at a higher server level. However, I doubt this is happening just because you're using a VPN as I know that other members use VPNs without any issues. I am guessing that our hosts, who are responsible for the security of their network, impose that check when the VPN sends headers that fail to provide some type of authentication.

May I suggest you get a different server, or otherwise fix this issue? If I browse a page for more than a minute and then try to navigate to a different PE page, I get this annoying message every time. Additionally, and this is even worse, when I'm typing a message (such as this one!) and I take too long to hit "submit", the page just reloads when I click "submit" and all my typing is lost .

Sorry, but it's unlikely we will change hosts as they are UK based which makes contact for me easier and they have continued to provide excellent support and a reliable network.

Regarding losing posts, regardless of where I am making posts I make it a matter of good practice to press Ctrl-A (select all) and Ctrl-C (copy) before hitting post; or long press, Select All, Copy on a portable device. That way if an error occurs you can paste it back in again.

@junglemath While not ideal, you can also enable split-tunnelling and put projecteuler.net and projecteuler.chat on your list of exception. That's what I ended up having to do since the benefit of using a VPN on PE didn't outweigh the annoyance factor of using one. I think for most people, there isn't much of a benefit hiding PE from your ISP since—as far as I know—PE is quite privacy friendly. Though your reasons may differ from mine.