Nothing wrong with making your site inaccessible if it can be tolerated or there are alternative methods.

True, if you run a site with e.g. (royalty free) photos and require users to sign up, the chances are slim someone wants to view the website with a text-based browser. Still it's annoying, but ok, it might be tolerable.

However, this basically boils down to the same argument on computer security. Lots of people ban telnet, pop3 and other protocols that allow passwords being sent in plain text. It's all about how much comfort you want to give up for "security". How much "trouble" do you want to put your users through to give them what they want. IMHO, a website doesn't need such security measures as posted by the OP, but then again, I still didn't ban pop3 access for my users ;)

Instead of putting your visitors through the hassle, you might put some time in it yourself, by snooping through logfiles (or create a script that does it for you) and find the ip addresses of the "users" that filled out the form more than once in a certain time span. (And yes, that wouldn't mean for certain that you're dealing with a bot, but when the form was filled out 20 times in under a minute, the chances are, you are dealing with a bot.)

Like posted in the CB yesterday in a discussion wheter to ban certain music for kids (Cradle of Filth was the band in question, if you were curious), the actual ban might lead to curiosity that was never there before. People may want to work on scripts to circumvent the visual check, just because it's there.

A tiny disclaimer claiming site security will give the users the "why". And if they ask why and threaten to go away, well. you can only extend your reach so far :)

The question is "do you value your customers or not"? If not, then there is no argument against using visual or audio tricks to make sure you're handling a real human. But why not step it up a notch and require users to come see you in person with a valid passport? This would surely ban the "evil" scripts.

--
b10m

In reply to Re: Code to Block Scripts/Harwesters (GD based?) by b10m
in thread Code to Block Scripts/Harwesters (GD based?) by PetaMem

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