A honeypot CAPTCHA is widely considered a GDPR-compliant alternative to traditional CAPTCHAs. However, since even primitive spam bots can easily bypass the honeypots, a honeypot CAPTCHA cannot match a real CAPTCHA when it comes to protecting against spam emails.
That’s why we want to compare honeypot CAPTCHA vs. CAPTCHA in more detail: What are the differences between the two solutions? Is a honeypot enough to protect a company from spam? We’ll show you!
What is a honeypot captcha?
Websites have many vulnerabilities when it comes to spam attacks, abuse and spam e-mails. Contact forms, registration, orders, login areas, newsletter subscriptions – wherever interaction with the website is possible, these forms can also be misused for spam.
Many recommend using honeypots as a spam protection measure and CAPTCHA alternative. A honeypot CAPTCHA or honeypot trap or trap is a spam trap. This trap consists of an invisible form field that is not seen by human users and therefore not filled out, but is interpreted as a supposedly “real” form field by primitive spam bots and filled out.
The additional honeypot field comes in the form of a text field or a checkbox. Thanks to CSS and JavaScript, this honeypot field is invisible to the human user and is not filled in. However, simple spam bots fill in all form fields – including the honeypot fields – which reveals them as attackers. Simple spambots are blocked in this way.
The term honeypot refers to a decoy mechanism that attracts cybercriminals in order to analyze and thus prevent possible attacks and intentions. A honeypot CAPTCHA is used to identify bots that attempt to carry out spam attacks via online forms. They are lured into a trap with a “sticky” pot of honey (the invisible form field).
Advantages of Honeypot CAPTCHAs
Honeypot CAPTCHAs are invisible to humans.
Anti-spam honeypots are GDPR compliant because no personal data is collected with a honeypot field.
The honeypot method is easy to implement.
Disadvantages of Honeypot CAPTCHAs
Honeypot mechanisms are insecure. They are only suitable for detecting attackers with simple skills. Any simple bot can skip hidden honeypot fields and thus launch an attack.
Time and again, network honeypots are compromised by spammers. There is a security risk for network attacks within the company. A honeypot that can easily be recognized as a trap is then used as a starting point for further attacks within the network.
Screen readers often erroneously identify hidden honeypot fields. They read the HTML code directly and thus also recognize fields that are only hidden via CSS. People with visual impairments fill in these fields, which leads to false positives and thus blocks real people. This leads to problems in terms of user-friendliness and ultimately CAPTCHA accessibility.
What is a CAPTCHA?
Everyone knows CAPTCHAs. As an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, CAPTCHAs help to distinguish automated requests by bots from human interaction.
To do this, CAPTCHA tests are used on critical online forms. These tests can only be solved by humans and not by automated programs. There are different types of CAPTCHAs:
Traditional providers (Google reCAPTCHA vs. hCaptcha, invisible reCAPTCHA) work with image-, audio-, text- and signal-based tasks that are difficult for many people to solve. They impair the UX and often have additional problems in terms of data protection.
Modern providers (Friendly Captcha), on the other hand, rely on Proof-of-Work (PoW). Here, the user’s device is challenged with a cryptographic calculation task, while the human being does not notice the test. This makes Friendly Captcha a particularly user-friendly, data protection-compliant and effective solution against advanced bots. Test the advantages of Friendly Captcha and sign up for the 30-day trial period.
Modern CAPTCHAs fully protect websites and mobile apps. They not only fend off the simplest spammers, but also advanced bot attacks such as account takeover (ATO), distributed denial of service (DDos), credential stuffing, web scraping or scalping.
Advantages of CAPTCHAs
A modern CAPTCHA is much more secure than a honeypot CAPTCHA. Modern CAPTCHAs detect advanced bot threats and cyber attacks, while honeypots only detect the simplest spam attacks.
Modern PoW CAPTCHAs are invisible, user-friendly and fully accessible.
Professional CAPTCHA providers provide a detailed risk analysis and risk database to detect and prevent attack patterns.
Disadvantages of CAPTCHAs
Traditional CAPTCHAs are not accessible. Text and image CAPTCHAs worsen the user experience and lead to low conversion rates.
Traditional providers are criticized by many data protection experts for their comprehensive data analysis and storage, the use of CAPTCHA cookies, analysis for marketing purposes, and data transfer to third countries. In most cases, they cannot comply with international data protection regulations such as the GDPR or CCPA.
Advanced bots are now able to solve simple image recognition and text decoding tests more easily and faster than humans with the help of AI.
Which solution is better for protecting against spam: CAPTCHA or Honeypot CAPTCHA?
Finally, we compare CAPTCHAs and Honeypot CAPTCHAs: Which solution reliably protects forms and which is better against attacks from advanced bots?
| Feature | Honeypot CAPTCHA | Traditional CAPTCHA (Google reCAPTCHA) | Modern CAPTCHA (Friendly Captcha) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Visibility |
Invisible to human users |
Visible tests that users solve manually |
Invisible test in the background |
|
User-friendliness |
User-friendly without interaction |
Impairs UX through testing |
User-friendly without interaction |
|
Accessibility |
Can cause problems with screen readers (false positives) |
Image recognition and text CAPTCHTAs are not accessible |
Completely accessible and WCAG compliant |
|
Data protection |
GDPR compliant without collecting personal data |
Often not GDPR compliant |
Data protection compliant (GDPR, CCPA…) |
|
Security |
Hardly effective against spam |
Effective against spam and simple bots |
High protection against advanced bots and cyber attacks |
Despite what many claim, we have shown that honeypot fields are not sufficient as spam protection for forms. Trivial spam bots simply bypass the hidden honeypot fields and start their attack directly. Users of screen readers, on the other hand, fill them out and are thus excluded. The practically non-existent security precludes the use of honeypot fields for professional spam protection.
Thus, in a professional enterprise environment, only a modern CAPTCHA can be used to protect against bots. In comparison, traditional CAPTCHA providers are no longer up to date due to their poor compatibility with data protection and accessibility for websites and apps with high visitor numbers. Modern CAPTCHAs solve these challenges using advanced technology, without disturbing real people.
Friendly Captcha is more secure than a Honeypot CAPTCHA and the best alternative to traditional CAPTCHAs. Friendly Captcha is fully compliant with international data protection regulations such as GDPR or CCPA; it is also fully accessible and WCAG compliant.
When it comes to choosing between Honeypot CAPTCHA and CAPTCHA, Friendly Captcha is the best choice for modern companies with high security requirements. There is no way around the secure, data protection-compliant and accessible Friendly Captcha.
Create an account and test the invisible Friendly Captcha for 30 days for free.
FAQ
Yes, as a website operator you need spam protection for your forms. Online forms are a popular target for spam bots and cybercriminals. Without protection, spam emails, fake registrations or even hacker attacks (e.g. credential stuffing) can endanger the website and possibly even entire systems. Many recommend a honeypot CAPTCHA here to block unwanted automated input. However, a honeypot is not a good choice for getting more security for your own forms. The simplest spam bots quickly learn to omit these hidden honeypot fields and achieve their goal despite the supposed protection.
If you are looking for comprehensive protection against advanced bot attacks and want to keep an eye on the traffic on your website, a modern CAPTCHA like Friendly Captcha is a good choice.
A honeypot field is a form field that is invisible to humans and hidden using CSS/JS. Trivial bots that automatically fill in all the fields on a page will still recognize this hidden field and enter data into it. This reveals them as spam bots and they can be blocked. All other attacks are not identified as malicious.
A honeypot CAPTCHA is not sufficient to defend against advanced bots in an enterprise environment. Here, it is recommended to use a secure modern CAPTCHA like Friendly Captcha.
In principle, no personal data is collected from real users in a classic honeypot field, since the field should not be visible at all. Consequently, a honeypot is usually GDPR-compliant, but it is not as secure as a modern CAPTCHA. Website operators must ensure that they do not store or process unnecessary data and that they observe the principle of data minimization. Friendly Captcha is a secure CAPTCHA that complies with international data protection regulations. You can sign up for a 30-day trial period here!
