Should you be using Captchas?

Captcha is a method that aims to determine if the website users are humans or bots. Captchas are seen all over the Internet since the 2007, and there are so many different versions of the system in use today.

Captcha is an acronym that stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. And, it is very hard to give the conclusive answer to the usefulness of captchas, because there are cases for and against it, and you, as a website owner have to decide if the captchas are something you want to use on your website or not. The main goal of captcha is to protect forms on the website from SPAM.

Pros of Captchas

There are some undeniable pros of using captchas.

• Affects the Bots activity. Captchas do affect the activity of the bots when it comes to the interactive website elements, and forms protected with Captchas will see a lot lower number of bots activity and submissions.
• You will get less SPAM. Captcha protecting comments or forum forms will have an effect, and these forms will see less SPAM.

Cons of Captchas

But, all these pros are only few compared to so many issues that using captchas will bring.

• Impact on the website page loading. Captchas depend on the third party services, and they will require loading of the files and frames that will affect page loading performance to some extent.
• Users privacy concerns. While captchas aim to improve security, in the same time, they are compromising the users privacy because they need to gather at least some user information to make their determinations. You should investigate how much each captcha system is affecting the users privacy.
• Captchas can be very annoying. While many captcha systems today aim to be invisible or not needing direct user interaction, that is not always the case, and users can still see ugly popups where they need to solve something to pass captcha test.
• Captchas have negative effect on forms conversions. All the studies conducted about captchas point to the same thing: forms with captchas have lower conversion because a lot of users will abandon form when they reach captcha.
• Affecting forms UX. No matter how they look, the captchas affect the form overall user experience. They are always looking out of place, and they can’t be styled in any way to be close to the way the form looks. With some simpler forms they can be fitted, but not everywhere.
• Users hate Captchas. This is one of the universal truths about captchas, everyone hates them. You will get users commenting on the annoyance of having to solve captchas, and you will have users leave your forms because of captchas.
• Some bots can solve Captchas. There are known cases where bots can solve some captchas using various methods.
• Not all SPAM is generated by bots. Captcha will have no effect on SPAM generated by real humans. In many countries, posting SPAM is a low paying job, and the people doing that will solve captchas and post SPAM.

There are better ways to stop SPAM

coreSecurity Pro has so many different methods to minimize SPAM, and using most of them will be more effective than using captchas and annoying your users or affecting website performance and website look and feel. Check out the Antispam features for more information.

When it comes to Antispam features, some of them are expanded to include Captchas as an optional antispam method.

Why include Captcha support in coreSecurity Pro?

coreSecurity Pro aims to be a comprehensive plugin when it comes to security and antispam protection, and having captchas included is important to have as a possibility for users to choose.