5 ms·
This feels very hacky and not like a long term solution to the problem. With some effort on the part of spammers they could write bots that simply read the fiel
by Kequc 13y ago
This feels very hacky and not like a long term solution to the problem. With some effort on the part of spammers they could write bots that simply read the field labels or placeholder text, check css attributes, etc. Then you have the problem again and your code is bastardised all to heck for your effort.
Just use positive captcha for now until an actual solution comes along but don't start screwing around with the output of your markup. That will cause problems when you want to change or even just run tests on things.
Markup should be readable by machines.
- eli 13y agoBefore deciding on that as a solution I'd encourage you to A/B test the positive captcha and see how many people you lose...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- StavrosK 13y agoYou're dismissing it too quickly. I've used this method on my stock contact forms and it has worked 100%. Nobody, nobody bothers writing custom bots for your thing, so, no matter which method you use, if it's not something common, it will stop 100% of spammers, if you're a low-profit site for them. If you're Craigslist, sure, it won't work, but you probably aren't. All my clients' contact forms thank me for using (something like) this method.
- tokenizerrr 13y ago> nobody bothers writing custom bots for your thing This is not quite true, having written several custom bots myself. Sites with any kind of social contact will become targetted at some point.
- StavrosK 13y agoLater on in the sentence: "if you're a low-profit site for them". Still, it's a very easy way to deter large amounts of spam, no matter how good a target you are, so the ROI is almost always positive.