[Web4lib] Spam-resistant forms service

[Deborah Kaplan]

On Tue, 20 Jun 2006, K.G. Schneider wrote:
> Thanks, the accessibility issue did have me concerned about captchas, though
> as I thought about Thomas D's "cognitive" suggestion, I wonder if the audio
> link couldn't be a simple, brief podcast that provided information on
> alternate access methods. It's not as if it had to change very often. E.g.
> "Please email us at [very clearly read email address]." 

Audio and cognitive tests are the main places where accessible
captchas are headed, definitely. Keep in mind, though, that
forcing disabled users to jump through extra hoops -- such as
sending an e-mail -- is usually considered an inadequate
accessibility change. Better to put in a sound file with simple
instructions ("type 4, 5, c"). 

You won't have to change it very often, if ever.  The fact is
most spam robots don't have a human interaction training them,
and no person is going to go through and listen to your sound
file in order to train the spam robot to break your particular
system. I've done this with a wiki I run -- I've passworded it,
but the password is in plaintext on every single page. This
stopped the outrageous amount of spam I was getting, because the
spam robots aren't run by people who really care about my wiki in
particular, and they aren't going to take the effort to go read
the page and figure out how to break my protection.

-Deborah
-- 
Deborah Kaplan
Digital Initiatives Librarian
Brandeis University