Online Forms are a critical part of doing business on the internet, whether it’s internet banking, booking flights / travel or simply lodging an enquiry with a local business. However, due to an increase in Spam being received via online forms, many businesses are opting to install “humanity” checks.
What is a humanity check?
A humanity check is usually a graphic containing a series of words or letters. These letters / words need to be entered before a form can be submitted. As these words and letters are often jumbled and distorted, automatic spam “robots” cannot lodge these forms (i.e. it requires a human to decipher the text, and then enter it).
The pros and cons
Installing a humanity check ensures that the form submitted is being done by a real person (and not a computer program). This is really important if you are getting a lot of spam through your online form, or perhaps if you have valuable information (such as ticketmaster or ticketek) and you want to make sure your site is not hounded by automatic programs.
However the drawbacks are that many users struggle with entering the humanity check correctly. Users are notorious for misspelling them or not entering the correct details into online forms, and having a humanity check can sometimes put users off.
