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How to Prevent Form Spam Without Captchas

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the can't-beat-the-curte-power-of-kittenauth dept.

UnderAttack writes "Spam submitted to web contact forms and forums continues to be a huge problem. The standard way out is the use of captchas. However, captchas can be hard to read even for humans. And if implemented wrong, they will be read by the bots. The SANS Internet Storm Center covers a nice set of alternatives to captchas. For example, the use of style sheets to hide certain form fields from humans, but make them 'attractive' to bots. The idea of these methods is to increase the work a spammer has to do to spam the form without inconveniencing regular users."

3 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What is wrong with Captchas? by Pichu0102 · · Score: 4, Informative
    The slashdot captchas are among the easiest I have ever seen to read, however I still havn't seen any spam on slashdot.

    You obviously don't browse the comments at -1.
  2. Related Story by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since the editors didn't see fit to put this in related links:

    What Ways Can Sites Handle Spambot Attacks?

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  3. Re:Javascript by masterzora · · Score: 3, Informative

    The reason CSS doesn't cause the same issues is because the CSS method isn't dependent on the CSS working. If the CSS doesn't work, then, oh well, good thing we have this text telling the user not to use those forms. If the Javascript doesn't work, crap, the user can't even see the necessary forms. See the difference?

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