It seems that Ford is stepping up their anti-aggregation measures on the order tracker...I'm out

[Wsl346]

Hey all,

If you have been around the forum for long enough, you'll know that I have been tracking MY23 Lightning production and deliveries. Things were going swimmingly until Ford added the captcha to their tracker page, bricking @AndIAreSo's amazing tracking tool. In terms of what I was doing, this wasn't that big of a deal. It added a little extra time but nothing to deter me from my tracking duties.

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed that Ford has started to increase the number of captchas one needs to complete in order to process a tracking request. What I've noticed is that the tracker will allow me to query about 10-15 VINs before captcha is required. From there, the Ford tracker will slowly start adding more and more captchas. Let me tell you, I am now an expert at identifying bridges, buses, motorcycles, bikes, traffic lights, and crosswalks. If you ever need help with identifying any of the aforementioned items, I am your man. It all came to a head today when it started requiring me to review 5+ captchas in a row. The most I've answered in a row today was 11! WTF. To be fair though, I am violating the terms and conditions so I can't be too upset.

I'm not sure if this change applies to anyone processing a large amount of VINs, or if my IP address has been flagged specifically but the message has been received loud and clear. I am out. With the changes Ford has made, I am no longer going to continue tracking NEW MY23 deliveries. I will continue to track all the trucks through calendar year 2022 that are currently on my list. If anyone else wants to trudge through the process for trucks with a build week in calendar year 2023, you are welcome to take the reigns and I'd be happy to share my excel template with you.

It's been fun y'all but all good things must come to an end, right?

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[3rdgenfan]

I definitely appreciate the work you and the others put into these trackers; was interesting to take a peek at who's waiting for what and if there was a correlation in avg wait times.

 

[carys98]

Thanks for all of your work. Ford should be paying you instead of making your life more difficult. You have provided more useful information than Ford and my dealer combined.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Thanks for stepping up to handle the initial run of MY23 builds!!

I agree it's getting burdensome to continue much longer, I've got a smattering of 23's through B/W 1/9 to watch, then I'm out.

I don't know if the problem is with us as "influencers & facilitators" as much as it's with the bulk data scanners out there overloading their systems as the reason for the intervention.

Coming from my days as a retired revenue officer / process analyst, I understand the reasoning behind the measures. It was fun while it lasted, but now on to normal life.

The rest of our members in later build weeks can look back on the historic posts and several threads of instruction pinned at the top of the thread node to continue self service research, it's not hard and for the most part regular members looking up their own orders won't encounter the reCaptcha.

I will still be ~moderating~ and watching the user experiences threads while we're getting used to our trucks, getting the Power up's and monitoring the break-fix topics, good luck folks!!

 

[HaroldCal]

Have you tried doing the queries in an incognito/private browser window? It might be setting a cookie each time you submit a query.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Have you tried doing the queries in an incognito/private browser window? It might be setting a cookie each time you submit a query.

I have, the recaptcha is still intervening after so many requests.

 

[HaroldCal]

I have, the recaptcha is still intervening after so many requests.

Maybe try a browser plug in that let's you change/randomize user agent?

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