We wanted to inform you about an ongoing effort to bolster the defense against contact form spam on your website.
As many of you are aware, combating contact form and signup spam poses a significant challenge for ecommerce website owners. Historically, we have utilized Google reCAPTCHA v2 technology to mitigate this issue. You're likely familiar with the conventional reCAPTCHA v2 form that asks if you're human, along with the pop-up prompting you to click specific patterns.
However, the widespread use of reCAPTCHA v2 has led cybercriminals to develop increasingly sophisticated automated solutions, allowing them to bypass even the most intricate reCAPTCHA v2 challenges. Consequently, an uptick in spam emails from contact forms has been observed.
To address this, Google has recently introduced reCAPTCHA v3, which, though not flawless, offers a more efficient form of protection. Unlike its predecessor, reCAPTCHA v3 operates invisibly for website visitors, eliminating the need for challenges to be solved. Instead, it continuously monitors each visitor's behavior to differentiate between humans and bots.
ReCAPTCHA v3 assigns a score between 0 and 10, indicating the likelihood that a request originated from a bot. A score close to 0 suggests a bot, while a score near 10 indicates a human.
We are in the process of implementing reCAPTCHA v3 across all sites in the coming weeks. This update will grant you greater control over the level of spam protection for your forms.
After your site has been upgraded, you can adjust the spam score by navigating to:
Settings :: Advanced Settings :: Advanced Settings
Choose the desired spam score and save your settings.
It's important to note that setting stricter thresholds may increase the likelihood of blocking legitimate users, while looser thresholds may allow more bots to go undetected. With reCAPTCHA v3, finding the right balance is crucial to minimizing both false positives and false negatives.
During the rollout, we will initially set the spam score at 5, striking a middle ground for your convenience.
While reCAPTCHA v3 won't entirely eliminate all spam issues from your contact forms, we believe it will significantly improve the overall experience and make managing spam more seamless for you.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we work towards a more secure online environment.
