Steven D. Brewer 🏳️⚧️The contact form on my website is basically only ever filled out by robots, so I added a checkbox that says, "I am a robot. Only check this box if you are a robot." https://stevendbrewer.com/contact-me/
Robots appear to find it irresistible.
Lyrial@stevendbrewer This is honestly brilliant.
Woozle Hypertwin@stevendbrewer At least they're honest (even if only accidentally).
Justin Derrick@stevendbrewer Hopefully you’re using that checkbox to identify which IP net blocks to ban at the firewall. :)
@JustinDerrick My website is hosted at a hosting service, so it isn't behind a firewall. I guess I could write a script that would write the ip address into a .htaccess file or something, but that sounds like sysadmin work. And I don't do sysadmin work anymore. 🙂
@stevendbrewer Software firewalls are available on most OS's now. When I built my last mail/web server, I set up a series of tables in files. I just add netblocks to a text file, and within an hour or so, the firewall picks up the changes and the bad actors are blocked forever...
It should be about as easy as modifying your .htaccess file. :)
... but believe me, I get it.
zhenech@stevendbrewer used to have that as a spam filter on my blog back when I was using WordPress. Was working well for a while, but at some point most bots figured it out. 😭
Max@stevendbrewer A honeypot field! They've been around for quite a while, good to see they're still effective!
Philip Bragg@stevendbrewer I have a pre-checked checkbox for "do not send" and humans realise they have to uncheck it, robots don't. I've tried so many tricks like this and it's the first one that really seems to work. Of course the robots wll read this and I'm doomed now…
JdeBPThe mailto: URL on my WWW site has had a pre-filled subject field instructing the recipient to delete the mail unread, for well over a decade, now.
Ted Mielczarek@stevendbrewer inverse captcha
J. Martin@stevendbrewer honeypot fields are the best (used them a lot), and this one doesn’t even need to be CSS-concealed from humans—clever & nifty! 👍🔥
Philipp Weiß@stevendbrewer Isn't the honeypot field normally hidden. 😁
derptron@stevendbrewer Maybe you should clarify "non-biologic".
Alyssa Voronin@stevendbrewer I have two thoughts:
1) A regular captcha checkbox has all of those words, in that order. Sure, one's missing, but modern AI is going to be ~94% sure that's fine, actually.
2) *I* find that button irresistible, not because I'm a robot, but because I'm a snarky bitch. 😅
@TranshumanBlues Are you the one that sent the message, "Beep boop"? 🙂
@stevendbrewer I was not, but I have the utmost respect for whoever did. 😂
Ian@stevendbrewer As a human, I find it pretty irresistible too. Though I'd probably be quoting some Kraftwerk lyrics in the message body.
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@stevendbrewer
Genius-level pricking. Love it.
Genius-level pricking. Love it.
Billy O'Neal
Carl Poppa 🛸@stevendbrewer you may still get humans checking it, because some (in fact, many!) humans just don't read 🥲😅
Dirk RitterGreat! 🥰
Seems we finally got the solution™. 🍿
Kōtare 
@stevendbrewer we've long used honeypot traps (as a nice alternative to reCaptcha) and have found them incredibly effective at blocking bots - and simple too.
Lily Star@stevendbrewer Hidden fields in a sign up form yield almost 100% success rate at identifying bots on every site I use it on.
James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺
jelte@stevendbrewer can you track how many people check it, think 'waaait a minute', and then uncheck it before submitting?
Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦@stevendbrewer @chriscorrigan I love this! 💯