Feature Request: Using hidden fields instead of captcha with a question

1 year 6 months ago #1 by Clemens
I have just run a test with SimpleQuiz with 36 participants. Only 29 did complete the quiz by filling the form and answering the AntiSpam question. The question was: How many eyes has a unicorn?

I was shocked to hear, that 5 participants had not been able to answer the question correctly and therefore they could not finish the test. Three of them were angry at me due to their own deficiencies :-)  !!!  – In future, I want to avoid this by using forms without such questions.

Now I heard about AntiSpam using captcha-less forms with hidden fields. If a hidden field would be filled, it is evident, that it is spam. As spam bots meanwhile are clever, to detect css like "display= none", the fields have to be hidden by unobtrusive measures like positioning the field "absolute" out of the normal viewport. As I could see by the inspector of my browser, SimpleQuiz does not use those hidden fields.

Christopher, would you please insert by default some of those hidden fields in the form, so that no additional captcha will be necessary?

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1 year 6 months ago #2 by Christopher Mavros
Hello Clemens and thank you for posting.
I understand what you are saying. SimpleQuiz currently offers two methods of anti-spam:
Captcha plugin and anti-spam questions.
You could change the anti-spam question to something even easier, if you don't have spam issues.

As per implementing what you are saying, I suppose that it is possible, but placing an input out of view using absolute positioning may pose other problems, like page rendering, mobile friendliness, etc.
I would have to think this through and do some research.
However, in the meantime, perhaps you could post this as a feature suggestion for Joomla in general, as this is not in the scope of a quiz extension, but posting forms in general.
Thank you for your suggestion!

Christopher Mavros
mavrosxristoforos@gmail.com
If you like our extensions, please rate us on the JED!

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1 year 6 months ago #3 by Clemens
Yes, I know, that I could choose to secure the forms of SimpleQuiz by captcha. And then the system wide integrated captcha is active, which can be configured in Jommla / configuration / site / standard captcha.
There are many extensions, which can be used instead of the Google recaptcha, which is default in Joomla, when activated. One of them, whose functions are mostly sufficient even in the free version is the extension Aimy captchaless.

It would be convenient and better in sense of stability, to use as less extensions as possible. In this sense, it would be nice, to have hidden fields integrated by default in any extension, which offers user input in forms. And of course, the bots are learning fast: if a hidden field is marked as such or it is hidden by simple CSS instruction, then the spam bot can detect this as a honey pot. I have seen many suggestions to solve this task in github. But my knowledge in scripting and / or PHP is very low, so that I cannot use this code in conjunction with already existing extensions like yours.

I am using a newsletter extension BWpostman, where the subscription forms are also prone to spam bots.  But the developer has integrated hidden fields since many years ad therefore no additional extension like Aimy captchaless is needed.

My feature request here is simply a wish or an idea for improvement. And actually I will use SimpleQuiz in conjunction with Aimy captchaless. Therefor my request is not demanding.
Kind regards
Clemens

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