Protecting against bots using Google reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a free Google service that helps separate bots from humans on submission forms. Here's how to add reCAPTCHA to your EmailOctopus sign-up forms.

Google offer a free service – reCAPTCHA - that helps separate bots from humans. You've probably seen this in action many times:

 

Our old hosted forms have this feature enabled by default for better protection. In the case of our new forms, you can enable reCAPTCHA via a checkbox under the Settings tab inside the form editor:

We use the latest version of Google reCAPTCHA, which doesn't require the user to check a checkbox. In fact, it often won't appear at all – it aims to be as unobtrusive as possible.