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Ask HN: What's the story with “Checking Connection Security” website loaders?

12 points by themerone ↗ HN
I'm encountering websites that load with a "Checking Connection Security" loading messages.

I'm certain it's some kind of dark pattern, but I can't figure out why a site would want to hijack the page load, instead of doing whatever work is happening in the background.

7 comments

[ 81.1 ms ] story [ 294 ms ] thread
arkadiyt
They're executing javascript to ensure e.g. you're not running in a headless browser. If you loaded the page and ran it in the background then the person making the request already got access to the page content, it's too late.
scarface74
How does it know that you’re using a headless browser?
wmf
Fingerprinting the browser using JS.
cypherg
helps prevent fraud, bots, spam, etc without forcing the user to solve a CAPTCHA
voytec
Oh but it does use hCaptcha and requires puzzle solving.
nhchris
How much fraud and spam can I do with read-only access to a website?
mgax
Gitlab does this and sometimes it takes 3-5 seconds. But navigating directly to a repository page bypasses this check.