Registration bot protection can overwhelm event registration forms, resulting in inaccurate attendee data and wasted administrative time. With smart plugin choices, CAPTCHA, honeypots, and email verification, it’s easy to reduce registration bot activity without affecting the experience for legitimate users.

A bot is a malicious program designed to gather information (email addresses) and other data from online sources like contact forms. These are then used to send unsolicited spam emails, or “spam”.

Effective Methods for Registration Bot Protection

Spambots have sophisticated scripts that fill out forms, click buttons, and navigate websites much faster than a human can. Their movements are also more deliberate and spread out over a larger area than a human’s, making them easier to detect. Other giveaways are erratic or inconsistent behavior, and they often come from new IP addresses or devices that don’t have any history of site visits.

The easiest way to weed out basic bots is by using the honeypot captcha technique. This involves adding a hidden field to your form that is invisible to humans but detectable by bots. If a bot fills out the field, it will be flagged as spam and rejected, allowing only real people to register.

Adding a double-opt-in process is another good way to ensure that you’re only getting signups from real people. When a signup is submitted, a confirmation link will be sent to the specified email address. A real person is unlikely to ignore an email from themselves, so they will click the link to confirm their email address.