I just tried AS on 3 auctions ending on 14 Sept. I lost 2 of 3 auctions due to Captcha, then3rd I was outbid about 15 sec before AS would have tried to bid. All of these were after 7 pm Pacific time. None were terribly important, I can get the items BIN later.
My husband mentioned he lost a couple auctions on the 13th and 14th, he hadn't connected my captcha problems with his possibly having bidding problems on his computer.
Below is the message I see on the Confirm pages. In my 7 years on eBay, I've never seen anything like this show up when bidding. I've occasionally been sent to the Sign In page, but never a captcha type page. This seems specifically aimed at something that can not read and type in a captcha, rather than an "unauthorized (human) user"
To keep eBay a safe place to buy and sell, we will occasionally ask you to enter a verification code. This helps us to block unauthorized users from entering our site. Please enter the verification code in the image below and click on the "Continue" button to enter our site. Learn more about our security policies.
I'd appreciate it if AS could keep users updated about this issue, it's very important to many of us.