Captcha Stopping New Registrations

[janer]

Hello,

Since our Captcha was finally turned on 6 weeks ago, we have received no spam registrations thank goodness (up to 50 a week before that which was a nightmare), but only 6 'proper' ones. Worried about this, I used another email address I have to go through the registration process. It took me 7 attempts to enter the Captcha numbers and letters so they actually worked! And I was really concentrating, and so I can only assume that you are intended to work out that if Upper case letters are shown the same size as lower case ones then they still should be entered as upper case - but it is not always easy to tell which is which is it!

Surely this bar on registrations isn't the experience of other Journals? I am convinced it is the reason we are not getting new registrations and we are really seeking to build our registration so this situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Can anybody advise me if they have had the same problems please, and if so how to fix it. We are running on OJS 2.2.1 if that's relevant, and make no charges to view.

Many thanks,

Janer

[jmacgreg]

Hi Janer,

I haven't heard of others hitting this kind of problem, but that doesn't mean it's not happening elsewhere. You may want to add some explicatory text to the "Validation Image" message key -- that's the common.captchaField.altText message key, which you can find in locale/en_US/locale.xml. You can also try experimenting with which font is used by changing the font_location parameter in config.inc.php -- you may find that another font might be more readable.

Cheers,
James

[janer]

Dear James,

Ironically, it has just taken me 4 goes to get through your Captcha template, so maybe the problem is more widespread than you think! I must have made a mistake the first time I typed it in because it immediately came up with the template and also told me I had exceeded my allowed attempts to log in - oh really - only one? Then I wasn't sure if the comma after the second word in the template should be included, so I put it in and that didn't work and so on!

When I asked our Editor to try on our own website it took him 4 attempts to register using another email address - so it obviously is causing us a serious problem!

Thanks for your advice - but it would be helpful to have guidance about the best font to use please.

Cheers
Jane

[jmacgreg]

Hi Jane,

I do share your frustration -- Captchas are definitely an imperfect solution to an infuriating problem, and we do get complaints about the reCaptcha plugin we use on the forum. Unfortunately, the reCaptcha plugin itself is probably the world's most-used captcha, and even that is apparently crackable (see http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/01/goo ... a-cracked/). Right now the problem is trying to find a balance between what humans can read and what computers can't, and that margin is becoming increasingly thin.

Back to your specific problem -- can you tell me which font you are using in your captcha, and possibly even provide a link to your site (PM is fine)? It'd be easier for me to see just how difficult the captcha is before I recommend a font.

Cheers,
James

[newone]

Hello,

Since our Captcha was finally turned on 6 weeks ago, we have received no spam registrations thank goodness (up to 50 a week before that which was a nightmare), but only 6 'proper' ones. Worried about this, I used another email address I have to go through the registration process. It took me 7 attempts to enter the Captcha numbers and letters so they actually worked! And I was really concentrating, and so I can only assume that you are intended to work out that if Upper case letters are shown the same size as lower case ones then they still should be entered as upper case - but it is not always easy to tell which is which is it!

Surely this bar on registrations isn't the experience of other Journals? I am convinced it is the reason we are not getting new registrations and we are really seeking to build our registration so this situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Can anybody advise me if they have had the same problems please, and if so how to fix it. We are running on OJS 2.2.1 if that's relevant, and make no charges to view.

Many thanks,

Janer

I can confirm that the Captcha code does present issues for registrations even in later edition of OJS. We have experienced similar issues. In some cases, you have to enter those Captcha code about 5 or 6 times for it to work.

For those that are having issues, we do help register for them. It would be great if this issue can be resolved by OJS.

[jmacgreg]

Hi newone,

Very recent versions of OJS/OCS have had recaptcha support also added (the code for which can be grabbed from http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4082). While not perfect, this recaptcha option *may* work better than the original captcha -- I'll note, though, that we do still have to help folks with recaptcha registration even on the support forum and wiki here, so it's still not perfect.

Cheers,
James