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Protecting web site from "spam" form submission

Hello,

I have a customer who is resistant to adding the "normal" captcha type protection to the main form on his web site. See bottom of page http://www.villageairportvan.com/index1.php

He wants a "simpler" way that does not require typing random letters / numbers into a text box on the form.

Is there anything like that?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

COBOLdinosaur

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xterm

There's any number of ways you could do this, although a captcha is generally the safest. Still, I'll give one example to get you and your customer thinking in a different direction - I've done this before.

So basically you create a pre-form which is simply an html grid of checkboxes (or radio buttons), say a 4x4 grid.

Then put an image on the page which shows the grid, but with a handful of the boxes/buttons checked.

The user has to simply match the image by clicking a the appropriate boxes, then submits, which takes them to the form page which is now set to only accept visitors referred from the pre-form page.

Richard Korts

ASKER

To xterm,

An interesting idea, I suspect they will NEVER go for it.

xterm

Well, if you're looking for something between "nothing" and a captcha, the options are somewhat limiting in terms of ways of preventing robots from abusing the form.

The other thing I've seen is a simple question with a drop-down answer to validate it not being a robot.

For instance:
What color is the sky?

Drop-down contains <red, yellow, blue, green>

SOLUTION

ghodder