Google search from search bar triggers Captcha
My current version of Firefox is 151.0.4 (64-bit) & for the past 2 weeks or so every time I use the search bar to google something it triggers one of those "We've detected unusual activity from your network" requiring a Captcha. At first I tried all of the typical stuff [antivirus, vpn, extensions, etc...] to make sure that wasn't the issue. But as of yesterday & confirmed today I can actually go to Google's website first & do the search from there with no issue & no captcha.
So, whatever the issue is has to do specifically with doing the search via the search bar... for some reason. Is this a bug in the browser, or is there perhaps some setting that could cause this to happen in the about:config page? Though, I doubt a setting could be it because I've changed the settings I've changed now for years without causing this issue.
All Replies (2)
Chosen Solution
To verify any setting impact you can either restart into troubleshooting mode for some more conservative defaults, or use the "Profile" functionality to create a new temporary profile to just test this behavior with a "clean slate".
This user fought the same pattern some time ago: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1519592
TBH I'm getting it from time to time — mostly in testing things, and nuking profiles and running burner accounts, I get these for stretches of time here and there. Some "less severe" blocks mean just refreshing the same search again works. The "more severe" means I get these repeatedly unless I go from their home page or previous search. Might be related to me wiping the profile and browsing data for goog, or that I'm not signed in with them — but only ever seen it in testing environment (i.e. unreleased versions of browsers or systems, using remote systems with datacenter IP addresses or VPNs — basically "dubious" traffic origins). Wondering if you might have saved something in your session data with them that would trip them off. If you e.g. download a separate Firefox Nightly nightly.mozilla.org to compare, is it the same, or that's fine?
You can also try changing the default search engine to any custom URL, incl. some of Google's — Add custom search engines in Firefox e.g. to show "Web" results tab first, you can try adding a new https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s entry and use that — see if you get different handling from them.
Adding the custom search engine google address solved it for me.
Just for the record on some of the other stuff in case other people find this thread in the future. My Firefox wipes everything anytime I close all instances of it running [history, site settings, cookies, etc... as for session data it would do it even if first opening Firefox. I had never experienced this until around 2 weeks ago & then it was constantly. It would happen every time I would use the search bar to search, unless I had already entered a captcha & not closed all windows so I had the cookie/session data stored it. Other search engines in the search bar did not do this, nor did going to google's homepage directly to search, only the search bar.
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