CAPTCHA in Web

[tarunap]

Hi All,

Had a doubt in Mind, how important is it to have captcha in web application/website.? Does captcha hurt user experience and conversions?

Share your thoughts..

 

[RDO Servers]

It annoys a lot of people.
It's also easy to get around, if someone wants to bad enough.

If you need/want to implement captcha, make sure it is not too difficult to read.

 

[michaelswengel]

As a user, I hate them. I understand the need to prevent bots from accessing systems and creating accounts, but often they are just too difficult to read and hurt the over all user experience. Just my two cents.

 

[Ron Killian]

Depends on if you want to spend a ton of your time deleting spam, or have the perfect user experience?

Sadly it's a necessity these days. Backlinkers use software that trolls the net for forms and comments to drop their crap. Doesn't matter if your site is popular or not, if there is a place to submit something they will do it.

Although, Google's new Recaptcha is just checking a box, so very simple and easy. Seems to be working well so far.

 

[michaelswengel]

That is a good point, Ron. I do like Google's new Recaptcha. It's better than staring at a screen trying to figure out some cryptic script.

 

[Ron Killian]

Ron Killian

Oh ya, I agree. Some of those regular captcha's can be such a pain to read. Or you have to keep refreshing them until you get something you can see.

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

Unfortunately, despite poorer user experience, Captcha one of the only spam-prevention tools that work. If someone spams your site regardless of Captcha, you can rest assured know that they have probably paid money to bi-pass it (like using death by captha services and similar API calls - real people actually guess some of those for a fee of pennies after an API call, a multi-million dollar industry now).

I am a big fan of using progressive frames for forms now, like Bootstrap's Modal framework. And then organizing the form(s) into steps. For instance: Name & Email | User & Password | Shipping Info | Captcha

4 separate forms making the user work seem less intensive. But these days users are really, really impatient. Good luck in your creativity.

 

[richasharma]

It is just like a human verification codes which we put while creating account to prove that we are not robots or machines. image is just for example.

 

[chrisparker]

As per me...CAPTCHA is required for the human verification as it helps us to restrict the bots on the websites. Its important to avoid the fake comments/wrong attempts to the website.

 

[velvet]

Hi tarunap,
there is a great security plugin that you should check out if you have a WordPress site. It's called WP Site Guardian.

The video will open your eyes as to how easy it is for nasty pasties to get in and make a mess.

The worst ones will be sending their spam from your domain and can get you in some trouble too.

I've had sites hacked that just had to be rebuilt from scratch because of these low life creatures.

Hacking is rife, and you need to protect your sites as best you can.

I do hate the captures too, and I can see by my email subscribes, and not confirmed entries that plenty of users don't like them either.

I still use confirmed opt ins though for my email subscriptions as it is so easy for any subscriber to give you pain if they choose to.

I just find it hard to understand why someone who has subscribed to a list can get upset if you send them emails. Crazy but true.

Anyway, protect your self and live with the reduced opt ins, and know your email list costs will be reduced.

Most users that have a problem with confirming are very likely to have a problem with taking action too, so I just don't worry about them.

Take good care of those that do opt in, and you will do fine.

cheers, Mal.

 

[EnricTellez]

As long as it's not to difficult, just a quick check. Otherwise it really hurts the user experience.

Make sure that it's not automatically set on active. Made that mistake myself once.

 

[thomsonkaren]

I hate it but i think it's quite important for websites!