How do you install a captcha on your form? Or stop your form from being hit by spambots?

Hi @lovejet We don’t have this feature within our forms, so I would definitely suggest giving the workaround above a go!

We are having immense issues with spambots completing our survey. We tried the suggested ‘dandelion’ question and it didn’t help at all. We are now trying our own ‘reCAPTCHA’ image and asking for a short answer that matches; however, I have tried this multiple times and my computer’s cache is storing my answer. So, if I type in the correct characters from the image and then move forward with the survey, when I open the survey link again, my ‘reCAPTCHA’ answer is already showing.

What other security solutions does TypeForm recommend currently?

What is TypeForm doing to ensure better security from bots? Since we are charged by survey responses, this seems like it will be an expensive issue for the customer.

Hello again, all! I wanted to let you know the product team has said they are investigating a solution for this, so something is in the works! I don’t have any further details, but just know that the team is actively looking into it. 

@SOPFLWRegion - from another user here with a question about your form..

Do you route your users to a form that is solely hosted on Typeform? Or do you embed it on your website/another page? 

If it’s embedded and the bots are filling it in, then you probably need to “up your game” on your site security BEFORE the bots get to the form. 

If it is standalone on Typeform with no embed, have you flipped the ‘allow form to be indexed’ switch on the share settings? If you did, to enable the indexing by Google, etc., you are increasing your chances of bots finding your typeform and trying to complete it. 

I agree it would be nice to have some better security from Typeform, but I also think that it is incumbent on us, as the creators of the forms, to understand how we are going to use it in our business processes and how best to reduce the instances of bot-completion. 

just my curmudgeonly tuppence.. 

des

To avoid bots and how the hosting support is telling me is it possible to have a CAPTCHA to avoid bots to fill the form? 

Thank you in advance

Hi @Zaesar happy Wednesday! I added your post here where we have the answer. 

Does anyone have any insight as to how effective the above mentioned solution is in regards to decreasing/eliminating form submission from bots?  I’m getting ready to implement Typeform as a main utility for a clients site but am hesitant due to the potential spam response issue.  Being that Typeform charges based on the number of responses and Zapier charges based on the number of tasks, having spam submissions is obviously not ideal.  Appreciate any insight!

Hey,

Unfortunately, not protecting the form results in a huge spam flow through Typeform.

Having to work around captcha by creating a custom spam protection patch is not ideal – it makes the form way too long.

I would also appreciate some insight. 

Hi, is there a way to avoid spam responses/submissions?

We recently published a form on our social media business channels with the link of our Typeform survey. I added a captcha on the form to avoid being spammed. Unfortunately, I think we are still getting spam responses. Unfortunately, 75% of our monthly response limit is almost used because of this.

If I delete a spam response, will that lower the percentage above?

Hi @tunde.hinton Thanks for stopping by the community. I posted your question here where we have some solutions that may help. 😁

I find it SHOCKING that Typeform charges based on the number of responses but does not offer any recaptcha integration solution. Unfortunately I’m stuck with this solution as I can’t afford to waste time having a developer on our team do this from scratch after already spending time integrating this form. This is a simple survey we meant to run over a few weeks, so I’ll suffer but I just want to stop the spam.

Typeform’s own suggestion is to add a question with logic - if the logic is correct, advance. If incorrect, redirect to a statement. Except the logic builder doesn’t allow us to do that - it says you cannot redirect to a skipped question or a different logic branch. You also can not redirect a captcha question back to itself. So even that is janky as all hell, as the only thing we can seem to do is redirect them to a previous question or back to the start - horrible UX. Suggestions from the community? Am I missing something? 

It’s insanely frustrating that I’ve now paid $50USD for 1000 responses, of which 398 are already used (2 were a real response, the other 396 were spam). On top of that, I have absolute junk data now that I have to clean up. And I can only clean 100 junk entries at a time (why??) but the “check all” button checks more than 100!!! So I have to go and check every single box by hand, 100 at a time, to remove the entries so I have valid data (spoiler - I chose not to and recreated my form instead.)
 

Am I missing something here guys? People seem to love Typeform but I don’t understand how you aren’t getting absolutely FLOODED with spam eating through your subscription fees when using these forms. I guess they aren’t meant to be public facing!!

Hi @ArrayTeam thanks for stopping by and sharing your feedback. I’ve added your post here where we have some workarounds. It sounds like you’ve given them a try, but I would definitely suggest using these to help prevent spam from submitting on your form. 

Yes, as I said in the post you just moved here, I tried the suggestions and they did not work as outlined. Yes the solution we implemented should hopefully stop things (now) however it’s incredibly clunky. Do you have anything new to offer? Will Typeform refund me the 400 spam entries?

Hi @ArrayTeam Glad to hear the solution is working! For any refund requests, you need to contact our billing team directly here. 

Hi, my company have just signed up to Typeform for a year and I’m dismayed to find that there doesn’t seem to be any native spam protection, especially with the pay-per-response pricing model. Is there any update on the above from January please?

It seems to me that there is obviously an incentive for Typeform to not prioritise a fix to this in order to generate additional revenue, which is really sad for us as users and makes me wish I had not chosen you as a supplier. 

I’m aware of the presented solutions (workarounds) but I don’t consider them fit for purpose and all are easily circumvented/automated and all over-complicate our questionnaire logic.

Exactly this. I was tempted to dispute charges with my credit card company but I just wrote it off. However I’ve made sure my staff knows not to use this system ever again! We already had sunk cost on our initial survey we ran with it. The data I got out of it was junk, even with the suggested hacks, I still got spam. Just not as much as I did with zero hackarounds. Typeform is trash.

This work must surely be done by now? I can’t find where the Capcha module is. Can you link this here?

Hi @BikeFinder I’m afraid we haven’t added this feature, but as always, keep an eye here for any announcements!

Don’t hold your breath. If you are getting spam, cancel any subscriptions you have with this company before TypeForm milks you for their incomplete system. Really Typeform? It’s 2023, you are a FORM company and you don’t have captcha…….complete insanity.

Hi @TheSarahYouKnow Our product team is aware of this limitation. Though, have you tried the workarounds above? 😀

Yes, I’ve tried the ridiculous workaround suggested. Not only is it extremely poor user flow, a failed answer can’t redirect you back to the same slide. It’s a TERRIBLE workaround, and on top of that, it only ends up filtering about 75% of spam, while simultaneously reducing conversion rates as legitimate users become frustrated with the janky “workaround.” In the meantime, Typeform greedily charges us for all this spam. And yes, I requested a fee reduction due to your lack of spam filtering, and was told to suck it, basically. I’m sure your company LOVES eating people’s money with spam, just rolls in the dollars doesn’t it?

Liz, you can’t possibly be a real person because all the automated messages come from “Liz.” Please, be real and admit that your system is about 8 years behind the curve by not implementing captcha. In the meantime, I’m going to keep screaming from the rooftops that no developer should touch this system with a ten foot pole.

@TheSarahYouKnow - maybe you should raise a support ticket with the Typeform Support desk directly and work with them to try and resolve your issue. 

just a thought.. 

I did speak to your team. They didn’t have anything to offer me beyond linking back to this post over and over again. Since that seems to be your response to the community, I think it’s a great idea for me to come on this post and let people know the solution doesn’t work.

@thesbro - good to know .. and since I don’t work for Typeform, maybe you spoke to the Typeform team.. 

If Typeform doesn’t function in your application ecosystem, then I guess you need to find a tool that does work for you. When you do locate one that meets your requirements for the captcha, please share those details so the rest of us can look at the solution you did find.. 

that would be appreciated. 

“Certified Partner and Champion” definitely sounds like you are part of the Typeform family.

Sure, the solution is I went back to having our team stylize our own forms with Gravity Forms, feeling pretty pissed about the ~$100 I spent with Typeform buying spam entries.