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

  • 22 April 2021
  • 81 replies
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Userlevel 1

Hi there,

 

I am looking to integrate Typeform into my website, however I need to ensure it is protected from spambots, as I recently in a nightmare situation on one of my Pardot forms.

I Googled and found this (below), but I can’t for the life of my figure out how to implement it into my form? 

 

Any ideas?

 

 

 

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Best answer by Mariana 23 April 2021, 11:38

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Hey @mbeaudry@wesbild.com. Welcome to the Typeform Community :hugging:

 

All you need to do is looking for an image like the one from the example you've shared:Image 2021-04-23 at 11.36.23 AM

 

Then add a Short Text question asking for the characters presented. Lastly, you'll need to add a logic jump such as:

If [response] is [7Yp3foRm] then jump to [next question]

In all other cases, jump to [Statement: We're sorry, but the text you entered does not match our captcha. Please try again.] 

 

Hope this helps! 

We love Typeform, but if it is publicly posted on our website or social one of the biggest issue is how much spam we get through Typeform and there is no way for us to block these spam email addresses so they keep retaking our surveys and cause us a lot of work to clean the responses and stats. Also we would like to be able to proactively block countries where most of these spam come from.

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Hi @joincircl Thanks for stopping by the community! :smiley: I added your original post here where we have the answer about preventing spam. While we don’t have specific country filtering, but I would suggest trying the workaround above!

How do you suggest making this spam prevention possible for survey participants with accessibility needs? Wouldn’t a blind user or someone with a screenreader get stuck on this question if it relies on being able to see & understand letters embedded in an image?

Userlevel 7
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How do you suggest making this spam prevention possible for survey participants with accessibility needs? Wouldn’t a blind user or someone with a screenreader get stuck on this question if it relies on being able to see & understand letters embedded in an image?

@Dandelion - screenreaders would read the alt text tag on the image, so if you have properly added in the captcha characters in the alt text, the screen reader should pick it up.. 

just voice #2 of 7 in my head.. 

des

  

How do you suggest making this spam prevention possible for survey participants with accessibility needs? Wouldn’t a blind user or someone with a screenreader get stuck on this question if it relies on being able to see & understand letters embedded in an image?

@Dandelion - screenreaders would read the alt text tag on the image, so if you have properly added in the captcha characters in the alt text, the screen reader should pick it up.. 

just voice #2 of 7 in my head.. 

des

Thanks for this! I’m not super savvy with alt text, so I considered that but I wasn’t sure if a bot would be able to parse the alt text as well. If you think the alt text would get through to a screenreader but stymie a bot, I’ll try it!

Also, if anyone has other suggestions for making accessible workarounds that function as a captcha, I’d love to hear about it!

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@Dandelion - this wiki might help with some options: https://www.accessibilityoz.com/products/ozwiki/captcha-alternatives-and-accessibility/

 

@john.desborough, thank you! That was very helpful. I also found this helpful: https://www.psychstudio.com/articles/bots-randoms-satisficing/

We ended up going with a multiple choice question where the question text reads “Unfortunately we've gotten a lot of spam & bot responses, so we have to make sure you're a real person. Are you a real person? If so, we want you to skip this question. Please just click OK or use the navigation arrows to continue.” All the response options say “I’m a bot.” Hopefully between that and the fake zipcodes they’re providing we’ll be able to screen them out. 

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@Dandelion - nice link.. and probably a good choice at this time. 

good luck in the implementation!!

des

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Hi @Dandelion this is a really great workaround - thanks for sharing! :grinning:

Thanks, @Liz ! It actually turned out that the spam on our survey simply skipped the question too, so based on some advice from friends we tried a different one, which has worked perfectly -- “Unfortunately we've gotten a lot of spam & bot responses, so we have to make sure you're a real person. Please type the last letter of this word: dandelion.” We made this question required (no other responses on the survey are required) and we haven’t had a single spam response since.

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Wow, those spammers are definitely smart ha! Thanks for sharing this workaround - this is a great idea! I’ll share it with our support team, too, in case anyone else asks. :grin:

@Dandelion Nice. Thank you

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This solution doesn't work after the first successful form fill as the input is pre-filled with “partially completion” form information. E.g. when you fill out the captcha field, the data will save in the local storage of the browser and some one can keep running their script over and over again. It happened to us. 

Saving partially completed forms should be an option not a default value. Thanks for making spam EVEN easier. 

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Hi @Jvermillion Once the form has been submitted, that data is no longer saved on the local browser, so you shouldn’t be running into this issue. So yes, while they could return to the form with the partial answers saved in the browser, this isn’t a form submission. 

I hope this helps clarify, but if you’re noticing any issues with the partial completion, let us know. 

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Actually, that’s not true. Try your own example: 

Fill out the captcha and then complete. The values are still there. Moreover, if it’s a person using a fake email, they can simply paste the value every time into the box.

 

 

 

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I did create one that uses random values, but I still can’t get it to work without the browser caching the completed values in local storage. 

If you pass the spam check you go to the next question, if not it starts you again.

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IF your team could remove the locally storage values for completed forms it would work, but sadly it does not work that way. 

 

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Hi @Jvermillion I tested this but I’m not able to reproduce the issue you’re stating. You can see this in my test below. Could you send a video of what you’re seeing? 

 

 

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I will also note, the issue has ceased. E.g. the local storage is not storing the values on our spam checker form anymore. Thank you. Take care. Very much appreciated!

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 The problem still exists for others though.

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Thanks for sending this over, @Jvermillion ! Though, the video cuts off when the respondent submits the form, so I can’t see what happens when they refresh the page after. Are they experiencing the issue after submitting the form? 

Now I am working on preventing spam submission on Typeform.

 

It would be great if I can integrate reCaptcha on Typeform but it seems that it is not possible since Typeform does not support google reCaptcha yet.

 

Could you please help me with this?

 

Looking forward to hearing from you very soon. 

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Hi @lovejet Thanks for stopping by the community! I added your post here where we have the answer. :grinning:

Hi @Liz ,

 

It is just for only one image. I need to make it to random images and answers.

 

How can I do that?

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