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I’m a fan of the Chinese-style captchas where you just move a puzzle piece with a slider. I have no idea how defeatable it is vs reCaptcha but it’s far far less painful.
I don't know these, do you have an example?
This trick is simple stupid and should not work but somehow the simple spam bots have not improved.
This does not work for sophisticated bots (never met one) or the ones programmed specifically for your site (happens very rarely).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Payment processing is nontrivial to set up, and doesn't make sense in a lot of contexts.
What if we had a mechanism that makes this kind of setup very trivial, and also risk free for the visitor? Then would you consider this kind of solution? EDIT: Same question for tty2300 (:
My parents don't even trust Amazon. They use Visa prepaid cards that they fill up at CVS whenever they have to.
Arguably they're doing the right thing and we're all doing the wrong thing. Either way, micropayments are one of those "ideal world" scenarios that are unlikely to transpire anytime soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Payment processing is nontrivial to set up, and doesn't make sense in a lot of contexts.
What if we had a mechanism that makes this kind of setup very trivial, and also risk free for the visitor? Then would you consider this kind of solution? EDIT: Same question for tty2300 (:
The minor cost may be offset by the fact that getting a post through to a site that has almost no spam because of its filter is valuable in itself. If the bot is sophisticated enough that the stuff it posts is hard to distinguish from a human shill or shitposter it may even prefer sites protected with such a system.
Useful for the vintage VIAGRA HERE link dumpers perhaps though, but those can be filtered out with a content filter.
Just out of curiosity, isn't that feasible today to implement some machine learning to stop spammers? Is there any project trying to come from this angle?
That's like saying "why don't you use algoritms and code". Like, sure, but what is it you're proposing? What features would you learn from and match against? (For those unfamiliar with algoritms and code as solution, it's a reference to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5ylndv/so_... )
I think I would start with these, probably looking into what other people are doing.
Just out of curiosity, isn't that feasible today to implement some machine learning to stop spammers? Is there any project trying to come from this angle?
Akismet has been doing this for some time I believe. The downside is that you have to send the form submission and other meta data (IP address, etc) to them. This can be better than the current reCaptcha v3 though.
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I do this but I also put a javascript field that is already checked and js unchecks it. not great for no script users but pretty good for any random bot that is using curl or some other scripting language and doesn’t check your trap box.
You can make that checkbox visible by default and put label "I'm not a bot" and uncheck + hide it using JS, that way noscript users will still see the checkbox and uncheck it manually.
I had a strange idea about solving this problem: How about a micro-payment, something like $0.01, instead of solving a puzzle? In that case maybe you won't care if many bots login to your website. I think that I by this time I have the technology to make something like this work, I was wondering if this is a good solution though. What do you think?
This approach may turn legitimate people away, namely:
1. People from regions where it is uncommon to have means to interface with payment processors.
2. Minors who, for one reason or another, are not able to obtain a debit card/credit card. Similarly, PayPal refuses minors.
W3C is requesting feedback for the document, if you'd like to make suggestions, please open an issue: https://github.com/w3c/apa/issues
I think it is best to design your own captcha around your use case. All you need to do is make the amount of work for spammers too high for targeting your site. Just recently, I added the idea of a captcha that might actually be enjoyable for users to my list of "things that should exist": http://www.gibney.de/things_that_should_exist The idea is to show the user a random image and ask what is on it. If the image is…
Plus with your use case there may be other criteria, for instance, if you have an 'apply now' job application form you can take in other data such as how long it took for someone to fill in the form and where their IP address is.
If you are hiring for a job in London and you are not likely to hire the office manager from Timbuktu who spends less than ten seconds uploading their CV and writing some cover letter then you can make your backend form processing not forward that email on to the HR department.
Putting a timestamp in the form as a form field with it encoded is easy. On the submit side you can unencode it and come to some judgement on the matter.
There is also the hidden checkbox with 'hideit' set to 1, not sure why that works but it does with a form you have written yourself, i.e. not stock Wordpress.
Although we don't like Google doing their deep-stalking of the visitors, fingerprinting them in re-captcha, there is no harm in collecting a little bit about the user. The user agent, screen size and location is useful in a sales/support perspective. If someone has a posh computer that says something about them. If they are using an old copy of a Microsoft browser then that says something about them.
On a general forum there can be standards of English to enforce. If someone is not using capital letters to start sentences, not using punctuation and not spelling so well then that can be flagged before they hit the 'send' button.
I have done a lot of tidying up of email lists created by bots and what surprises me is how easy it is to spot the fakes. It is like the bad guys in movies and games, doing everything possible to make it easy to get 'em. If spammers did real world robbery they would carry a bag labelled 'swag', be wearing 'Groucho glasses' and a stripey jumper.