My boss hates captcha’s and well, so do I even if they work. She instead suggests using a hidden field so that if it is filled out [by robots] that the form should not be submitted. Are there downsides to this method?
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My boss hates captcha’s and well, so do I even if they work. She instead suggests using a hidden field so that if it is filled out [by robots] that the form should not be submitted. Are there downsides to this method?
The method you described is typically referred to as a honeypot. While some sites have had success with them in the past your results will vary depending on the value of spamming your site. Also, with honeypots getting more widespread adoption spammers are using smarter pieces of software that can circumvent these types of traps. I suggest you take a look at this proof-of-work service that will allow you to use better bot fighting techniques that are still invisible to your users. That said, for things that have serious security implications (e.g. forgot password) I strongly recommend you use a CAPTCHA.