captcha for form submissions

[Nessmuk]

Getting bombarded with spam and looking some kind of captcha that I can mix with CF before form submission. I did find a CF tag online (recaptcha.riaforge.org) and got keys and all from recaptcha.net but, after reading forum blog at riaforge I'm not sure about it working for me. I have an older site developed with Allaire CF Studio ver 3.1 that I can't possibly go back and recode (although I do have Dreamweaver MX 2004)... Does anyone know of anything existing for CF that checks to see if an actual human submitted the form? I need this for both unsecure and secure sides of this older site... Thanks for any reply posts and I'll certainly let everyone know how this post worked out for me...

- Nessmuk

[CTek-Media_com]

Well this is built into CF8 - but you can't go there. It is actually very easy to build. You just need to create or download a series of images and then build a database table that has the image path in one column and the "answer" for the image (for example ysg45) in the next column - along with some ID field.

Run a query and pull one of the table records at random. When the user submits the form pass the ID and answer to the table and see if the combo is correct. If it is allow processing to continue etc.

It is probably as fast to build as it would be to plug in some kind of third party app - and easier to maintain.

[tclaremont]

Due to all of the objections to Captcha technologies and general user disdain, I finally just put a question on my form that says "What is the opposite of cold". If the entry equals "hot" then the form continues.

Looking at my web logs, the spammers/bots are not smart enough to actually READ the questions, and therefore never populate the answer with the word "hot".

Give it a try. If it does not work, go to something more sophisticated. Use your imagination with the question. You will likely have to tailor it to your audience and make it simple enough to where there is conceivably only one answer. You might consider just saying "Enter 'yes' if you want to continue".

Sometimes the simplest solution really is the best solution.