Support » Plugin: Google Forms » Captcha not preventing spam

  • Resolved New Hope Church

    (@new-hope-church)


    Several of my Google Forms are getting spam submissions even though captcha=on and the captcha form seems to be working – I can’t submit the form unless the captcha has been completed correctly. The one that’s currently giving me trouble is http://newhopeworship.com/sportscamp. I’m assuming the captcha answers are simple enough to be solved after a few automated tries, but that’s just a guess. Any ideas? Thanks for your help, and thanks also for this great plug-in!

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpgform/

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Mike Walsh

    (@mpwalsh8)

    I’ve seen this problem myself which was one of the driving forces behind enhancing the CAPTCHA functionality in the recent plugin update. In the v0.46 version you can choose whether the CAPTCA equation has two terms or three, the default is two. To make the equation a little harder to solve, you can also include subtraction and multiplication as operators.

    Unfortunately none of this matters IF the native Google URL for your form has been discovered by spammers because the native version doesn’t include the CAPTCHA, only the instance on your WordPress site does.

    If your native Google URL has been discovered, about the only thing you can do is rebuild your form and start with a new URL which really sucks.

    However, before I’d build a new form, I would consider adding a page break on your existing form. From the limited testing I’ve done, it seems the spambots don’t handle multi-page Google forms very well. I actually considered adding a single required check box question on one of my forms which the user would be required to check before proceeding and it would contain some acknowledgement of what was about to happen before proceeding.

    Hopefully some of these ideas will help.

    Mike

    Thread Starter New Hope Church

    (@new-hope-church)

    Thanks for the suggestions, Mike. I appreciate your quick response! Haven’t upgraded anything lately because we’re running WP on a Windows server and upgrading to WP 3.5x requires kid gloves. Guess I need to just take the time to do that and get everything up to date. In the meantime I’ll try a page break. Thanks again for your help!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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