Google search on Orion iOS repeatedly asks for captcha verification

nnyms

Since the past few days, when doing Google searches on Orion iOS, I get hit with a reCaptcha for every single search. Has there been a recent update which might have changed Orion iOS's fingerprint to change in a way that it is now seen as suspiscious by Google?

Doing those image classification puzzles repeatedly througout the day, when all I want is a quick Google search has been annoying enough that I am considering to stop using Orion iOS entirely and going back to Safari (which I don't want to).

I have not changed any settings, have deleted all extensions and I am using the same device in the same locations. I have also stopped clearing cookies (which I used to regularly) in the hope that it eases Google's robot detection.

I tried using Safari, thinking it might be some WebKit issue but it works perfectly fine for all searches, no captchas.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a reliable way to reproduce this issue. I don't get these repeated captchas on Orion macOS.

I don't want to be hit with captchas every time I google stuff.

Hitting captchas ocassionally is perfectly fine, such as right after clearing cookies.

1.4.13 (8) (WebKit 8618.4.1.10.4)

Michal

I see it too but I am not sure if this is something fixable on our end, i'll try to compare it with other browsers

nnyms

I tried a bunch of third-party iOS browsers including Firefox, Firefox Focus, Chrome and Brave and I don't face this issue anywhere else.

I believe Apple forces all third-party browsers to use WebKit underneath, so I feel this must be some recent change in Orion that has caused it to have a signature that triggers Google's detection.

I did try checking user agents of the browsers to see if there is anything out of the ordinary and noticed that Orion does not report the correct iOS version (I am on 17.7):

Orion: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.6.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Safari: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_7 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.7 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Brave: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_7 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Brave/1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Chrome: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/147.0.7727.47 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Firefox Focus: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_7 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) FxiOS/148 Mobile/15E148 Version/18.6

Firefox: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_7 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) FxiOS/149.2 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

I tried changing Orion's user agent to Safari's one and while anectodal, I feel I am hitting captchas less frequently.