I was referred to check out this article Preventing spam without using a CAPTCHA and it reminded me that I too had created an alternative method of preventing spam robots from signing up on my sites.

I found that sometimes the CAPTCHA failed and that there had to be another way to prove that someone is human. I imagine that the bot writers are constantly updating their algorithms for screen readers to try to read CAPTCHAs, or they are finding ways to crack the popular CAPTCHAs. I don’t doubt that this method would be pursued in the same fashion.

ConfirmHuman takes a very simple approach. The idea is: mimic something that only a human can do (for now). Some of these actions are clicking, dragging, scrolling. Something that is easy for a human to do, but slightly more complex for a bot to do, yet keeping the process simple enough that it won’t frustrate or divert users.

Installing ConfirmHuman

There are three steps involved in installing ConfirmHuman:

Step 1: Include the code

Include confirmhuman.js and confirmhuman.css on the page you want to use it.

Step 2: Modify the form

Give your form the name attribute of “cc” and then in your form somewhere, add this code:

<div id=”confirm_box”>
<div id=”confirm_click_box” style=”display:none” onclick=”cc.addClick()”><p>click here</p></div>
</div>

Step 3: The backend

Now, when someone posts the form, check for a POST variable named click_confirm and make sure its value is “done”.

In the future, if people like this idea, I may make it more customizable so you can pass in the name of the form and the id of your confirm box. For now, this method is simple and everything is done for you, so you lose a little bit of the customization.

DOWNLOAD CONFIRMHUMAN HERE

VIEW A DEMO HERE

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