Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 10:00 AM
Webmaster Level: All
If you allow users to publish content on your website, from leaving comments to creating user profiles, you’ll likely see spammers attempt to take advantage of these mechanisms to generate traffic to their own sites. Having this spammy content on your site isn't fun for anyone. Users may be subjected to annoying advertisements directing them to low-quality or dangerous sites containing scams or malware. And you as a webmaster may be hosting content that violates a search engine's quality guidelines, which can harm your site's standing in search results.
There are ways to handle this abuse, such as moderating comments and reviewing new user accounts, but there is often so much spam created that it can become impossible to keep up with. Spam can easily get to this unmanageable level because most spam isn’t created manually by a human spammer. Instead, spammers use computer programs called “bots” to automatically fill out web forms to create spam, and these bots can generate spam much faster than a human can review it.
To level the playing field, you can take steps to make sure that only humans can interact with potentially spammable features of your website. One way to determine which of your visitors are human is by using a CAPTCHA , which stands for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart." A typical CAPTCHA contains an image of distorted letters which humans can read, but are not easily understood by computers. Here's an example:
You can easily take advantage of this technology on your own site by using reCAPTCHA, a free service owned by Google. One unique aspect of reCAPTCHA is that data collected from the service is used to improve the process of scanning text, such as from books or newspapers. By using reCAPTCHA, you're not only protecting your site from spammers; you're helping to digitize the world's books.
Luis Von Ahn, one reCAPTCHA's co-founders, gives more details about how the service works in the video below:
If you’d like to implement reCAPTCHA for free on your own site, you can sign up here. Plugins are available for easy installation on popular applications and programming environments such as WordPress and PHP.
36 comments:
This approach is ok, i just digitalized 3 words 'wrongly' trying the system. I don't think I will really help tho.
I think OCR should start thinking like how many words + last and first and then using the few variants of that word in dictionaries.
Either way, I hope you get you readability 'bot' soon, that will REALLY improve your business.
Of course, people must trust Google, because what you are 'creating' is a bot able to pass ALL captchas in the world if everyone adopt the technology... kinda scary :)
Greetings,
Bart.
The problem with reCAPTCHA is that it's pretty difficult to use for end readers. Every time I've implemented it I would get a consistent 30-40% drop in form/comment submissions.
That's a pretty lethal hit, especially for lead generation/e-commerce forms.
I've found that Bad Behavior + Akismet + Really Simple CAPTCHA cuts out about 98% of spam without the big conversion rate hit.
what do you think about DOM based solutions? most bots dont implement the DOM or javascript... wouldn't it be nicer to check for DOM and javascript rather than inconveniencing users?
Cool, Google can use this for their highly controversial project of republishing books without author consent. I've always wanted to contribute to piracy in a larger way, and now I know how - thanks Google!
when will we able to use google accounts on recapatcha site?
This is nonsense. If you are a php programmer, then you should use one of many good captcha classes and don't use this third party service.
Any extra third party service will slow down your application and if recaptcha web service is unavailable, your users cannot comment at all.
By the way, why Google's own "Blogger" does not use reCaptcha for comment captcha form and instead uses some simple one-work captcha?
If they want people to use reCaptcha, then they should at least put in on their own bloggin service
I like reCaptcha a lot and wrote recently a tutorial on how-to use the reCaptcha API (to create custom challenge images)
how much did google pay that professor for recaptcha? seems a little shady, seeing as how it was funded by taxpayers.
unless you want lower conversion rates, I suggest not to use recaptcha. As Jerrol mentioned, use Akismet for Wordpress or Bad Behavior for other php needs. I don't know how
Applause, Nick! That's the best comment I've read here at GWC in recent memory. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were actually Michael Gray. The best snarky comments are the ones that ring true.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people are to stand up and applaud Google's every move. Sheeple, please...stop drinking the Kool-Aid - Google isn't really just trying to make you happy or the world a better place.
They may not be the root of all evil as some would have you believe, but they're not the benevolent entity you want to believe them to be either...
Lower conversion rates vs. more SPAM. There's nothing I hate more than SPAM in my e-mail account (well maybe taxes ;-D). I'll have to think about trying this out on a few sites and see what happens. Thanks for the info! Jared
It would be nice to see the CAPTCHA working in my blogger, gmail and other google services.
Thank you for this wonderful article "How to protect from spammers" in protecting the blog.InvestingMantra
Using a CAPTCHA goes against everything I believe in but I'm curious as to what's stopping Google from using the reCAPTCHA service. I submitted that very question when Matt opened the moderator topic last year. Maybe it's answered in a future video.
How about implementation into forms in Google Docs?
Thank you sro7e.com
Seems like these comments could benefit from reCAPTCHA too...
I love the reCAPTCHA stuff, however there are times where I find myself getting frustrated due to some of the words that come up either can't be read or just bad. Once spent nearly 20 minutes refreshing just to sign up on a forum before. :(
I hate recaptcha! I find the words are too hard to read and I have to refresh a lot to find easier ones. Thanks for the info.
Hello guys, why is not recaptcha used in google groups? We are getting a lot of spam @ google groups lately and it could gelp filtering it out. At the same time either it would block users or spammers would help recaptcha's algorithm?
Regards
recaotcha does nothing for Spambots that bypass the registration process in forums.
The only way I have been able to cut out a lot of Spam is not by use of any of these useless mods but by simple flood limiting and changing it weekly.
And oh looky at the captcha on this comment box - do I see a reCaptcha? Nope!
I want to keep my website and forum as free of Spam as possible, but it simply is never going to be until all the proxy hosts (who half of them are owned by compulsive spammers) get a grip.
Why Google has to fill people with false promises and protection myths I do not know. Google can't sort out the problem because the hackers and scammers/spammers are much better at coding and program making than they are - simple!
I have tries every mod out there to beat spam.
LoL a truly patient and resilient spammer will even post the 10 comments it takes to get onto a board and then spam the heck out of it. reCaptcha or no reCaptcha.
Nuff Said...
I do not use captchas at all, but somehow manage 0 spam comments. (even before moderation) How? Custom field names + dummy fields that deny access if filled in and are named like the real wordpress comment form. EG: if you fill in the field named "author" which is required in default wordpress installs you are denied from making the comment. All the dummy fields are hidden with CSS.
Captchas are a real nuisance. They really slow down the process of doing any legitimate form filling. 99.9% of people are not scammers and yet we are given the road block that is captcha.
David, I must say that is one of the best ideas that I have seen on this topic. I really cannot stand any of those captcha and recaptcha things. Definitely not user friendly. If you are using a custom page and not a blogging service or anything, this would seem to be the best way to prevent bots from spamming your blog. Great post and thanks for the great suggestion David.
You can use reCaptcha for Joomla-Community Builder for FREE from here -
http://www.gigahertz.net.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=104&Itemid=86
or
http://code.google.com/p/cb-recaptcha/
reCaptcha, pls add my plug-in info in your plug-in list page.
Thank you.
I don't use CAPTCHA either. Like David I use various methods that determine human from spam. Works very well and since I've implemented them zero spam has gotten through.
To me CAPTCHA doesn't work well at all. I've entered in the correct letters before and be denied. Some are extremely hard to read and even the audio help is sometimes no help at all. All it does is make it harder for people to post/comment. Why not just implement a little css/javascript scripting and the user never knows.
I'm no genius so I wonder why others aren't doing the same.
@David - that's a good technique, but the search crawlers frown upon anything hidden, tread lightly.
The visual task of recognising distorted words will eventually be completely possible to automate. So this captcha blocks cheap bots and might allow Fox News expensive bots to pass. Anyone in favour of that?
A completely different approach to do the CAPTCHA test is to ask, in plain text, a question. For example, 'what is the capital of Austria' which any schoolkid can answer. Unless they were brought up on Fox TV.
This is really neat. I got lost in the instructions though. How computer savy must you be to protect your blog site?
wow...its a good
by the way is same with the verify on blog?
Yes i agree with you that reCAPTCHA always protect our site from spammers. Now a days people worked spammy a lot for increasing site traffic so reCAPTCHA is best for protect your site from spammers. I read your article its good. Thanks for sharing us.
Seo Tips And Tricks
We need recaptcha in google docs form. How about this idea?
Yeah, in late April 2012 recaptcha images are still too darn difficult to make out... Most users take one look at that hideous twisted word pair and click away...
I have a new Mac. How do I get the daily Google Doodle to show up on my Home Google page? It used to come on automatically on my old PC but I can't find any way to get them to come on automatically every day they change. I love the Google Doodles. Please help me! Thanks for any instructions or tips. Thanks very much.
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