News Courtesy of Techspot.com:
To prove that you’re human and not a bot, the reCAPTCHA system, which Google acquired in 2009, often asks site visitors to pick sections of a picture that show something specific, such as cars or street signs. There’s also the famous test that shows a barely legible piece of text and asks people to decipher it.
Google has been improving the system over the years, such as adding a ‘test’ that involves simply moving the mouse and selecting a tick box, but with version 3 of reCAPTCHA, which is currently in its beta phase, interactive challenges are replaced with user “scores.”
I must’ve missed this news last month. I’m a huge proponent of anti-spam measures and contact form security. Especially Google’s recaptcha service. A form without captcha will almost certainly be pummeled with spam messages. This can make filtering out legitimate messages difficult as well as consume resources for your website and server. Over the last several years it has been standard to include Recaptcha for all of the contact forms on clients’ websites.
I started off with Recaptcha v2. Instead of deciphering and entering a scrambled message or code, the visitor would be greeted with a checkbox and a series of images. Google would then instruct to either select all of the road signs, storefronts, or similar objects contained within each image. Selecting the appropriate images correctly would allow the user to pass the test and submit the form. While this is an effective method for preventing spam, it is quite an annoyance to legitimate visitors.
Recaptcha v3 will do away with any type of user interactions. Instead, a score will be calculated based on the performance of the visitor. A lot of the variables for calculating this score are not known to the general public. However, I’m pretty sure that mouse speed, behavior, and movement is one of them. It remains to be seen how effective it will be at allowing actual visitors to submit forms vs keeping the bots away. One thing is for sure, the less hassle involved with submitting those forms will undoubtedly increase conversions.