Fight with Spam: 15+ Free Captcha Solutions
Siva Kumar
A ‘Captcha’ (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) is a challenge-response test most often placed within web forms to determine whether the user is human or a spam bot. The purpose of CAPTCHA is to block form submissions by spam bots, which are automated scripts that post spam content everywhere they can.It usually involves an image showing some distorted text, requiring the user to type in what they see in the distorted text.
The original CAPTCHA examples are now trivial for current algorithms to recognize, and the only option that developers had, was to increase the complexity of the distortion. Successive CAPTCHA systems have added more distortion, extraneous lines and shapes, fuzz on the letters, multiple colors and different sizes all in an attempt to stay ahead of the spammers.
1.Recaptcha
reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old-time radio shows.reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
2.Akismet
Automatic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and track back spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.
3.Textdisguise
Text Disguise saw this problem that plagued many sites and went in search of a solution. The solution came in the form of CAPTCHA-images. We’ve already tackled the difficult task of image generation and distortion. And, with security in mind – we’ve developed an API that never actually transfers the word to your server, or to the user’s browser – eliminating any fear of someone/something listening in on the conversation and avoids the pitfalls associated with trying to encrypt the word and persist it on the client-side.
4.Defensio
More than just another spam filter, Defensio also eliminates malware and other unwanted or risky content to fully protect your blog or Web 2.0 application. For an example of this phenomenon, please see Barack Obama’s Site Leading to Trojan. This is a great example of malicious content that has been detected by Defensio.
5.Mollom
Mollom is a web service that helps you identify content quality and, more importantly, helps you stop spam on your blog, social network or community website. When site moderation becomes easier, you have more time and energy to interact with your community.
6.Notequalsoft
Notequalsoft is a small software development studio specializing in Microsoft® .NET™ applications and web development. Most software available on this site has been designed during the free-time of our developers, so please contact them to purchase.
7.asirra
Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access) is a HIP that works by asking users to identify photographs of cats and dogs. This task is difficult for computers, but our user studies have shown that people can accomplish it quickly and accurately. Many even think it’s fun!
8.opencaptcha
Basic installation is cut-and-paste, and requires no ability to program image manipulation scripts.New fonts, image algorithms, and distortions applied weekly.
9.captcha
Features:
- 50 different Captcha algorithms
- Audio Captcha support
- Custom Captcha image size
- JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP Captcha image formats
- Custom Captcha code length
- Choose between alpha, numeric and alphanumeric Captcha codes
10.captchas
This server provides CAPTCHA images and audio files you can use in html-forms. CAPTCHA images can prevent forms to be used by robots.
11.captchator
- works with any web programming language and framework (PHP, Ruby/Rails, Python, ASP, Perl, …)
- works on any server and shared hosting account, does not require extensions or special software
- can be implemented in just a few lines of code
- is easy to integrate with existing apps/websites.
12.ironclad-captcha
There thousands of robot programs that surf the Internet and fill in the forms to promote their sites, post unsolicited advertising or even compromise web sites they visit.Here this is the Professional free CAPTCHA for your site.
13.phpcaptcha
Securimage is an open-source free PHP CAPTCHA script for generating complex images and CAPTCHA codes to protect forms from spam and abuse. It can be easily added into existing forms on your website to provide protection from spam bots. It can run on most any webserver as long as you have PHP installed, and GD support within PHP. Securimage does everything from generating the CAPTCHA images to validating the typed code. Audible codes can be streamed to the browser with Flash for the vision impaired.
14.protectwebform
Spam is not delivered manually. There are many so-called spam robots (bots) which are spidering the web in order to find the form. Whenever such robots find the web form it tries to post a spam message to it. The only solution to protect your form is to add a verification image. This method will not protect you from spammers that are delivering their spam manually, but it will stop all the spam bots. Statistics show that spam delivered manually is less than 0.01% of all web form spam.
15.PHP captcha script
freeCap is a GPL CAPTCHA script to stop spam. It was written as a proof-of-concept at a time when there were really no other good PHP captcha scripts around (2005). For a long time I think it’s not untrue to say freeCap was the best PHP CAPTCHA there was.
16.snaphost
You don’t need to be a programmer to implement the script. Just insert a few lines of their code into your HTML form.
17.spamerator
Spamerator was invented to help prevent robots from brute-force login cracking and spammers from automatically submitting garbage content to websites.
18.Vidoop
Intuitive and Secure Image-Based Authentication Solutions.
19.webspamprotect
WebSpamProtect allows you to instantly add verification image (CAPTCHA) to your web site and protect your forms against spam robots.
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George
Posted 62 days ago 22Look at thins new WP plugin named Blue Captcha:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blue-captcha/
It has great features and seems great
Kent
Posted 77 days ago 21Ironclad captcha is the best one, since it really does take a human to figure it out. I don’t like re-captcha, because I have to go through like 20 reloads before I can see one that I can figure out, so it makes it so even humans can’t use it. LOL
sam
Posted 91 days ago 20just checking….
László Grad
Posted 270 days ago 19Try Free Animated CAPTCHA – HelloCaptcha!
urdu books
Posted 276 days ago 18i think this one is really nice, because i was trying to find this article, but couldn’t find, but at least, i have found it. and only on your site, thanks for sharing this.
Andre
Posted 521 days ago 17Captcha was invented by a lunatic, a looney, a completely crazy person. We should be treated like humans. I feel humiliated when have to type those strange,distorted letters. You all should find another way to prevent spam!
Bali
Posted 678 days ago 16Great article.. Like This.. ;)
Blue
Posted 702 days ago 15Not really a fan of captcha, but a nice list nonetheless.
cane
Posted 705 days ago 14Trumpca is a very unique jQuery ajaxed CAPTCHA plugin that requires just one click/mouse movement.
BORA
Posted 709 days ago 13Exactly what I was looking for a couple a days ago!
Thanks for putting together!
Confident Technologies
Posted 709 days ago 12Vidoop captcha (listed as #18) has been acquired by Confident Technologies and is now called Confident CAPTCHA. It’s a great alternative to those hard-to-read CAPTCHAs that force website visitors to decipher distorted text. Confident CAPTCHA presents the visitor with a grid of pictures and asks them to simply click on specific pictures to verify that they are human and not a bot.
You can see a demo of it and sign up for a free account here: http://demo.confidenttechnologies.com/captcha/
Ilie Ciorba
Posted 709 days ago 11I think I will stick with Akismet for my blog, I don’t like those blog where you have to write a ton of codes just to post your comment.
.-= Ilie Ciorba´s last blog ..Integration between Illustrator and Flash Catalyst CS5 =-.
Arun M
Posted 709 days ago 10Very useful posting. Thanks for sharing.
Keri
Posted 709 days ago 9Thanks for the roundup. I just wanted to add that it’s very important for accessibility reasons to have a captcha with a sound option, otherwise blind (and sometimes colorblind) visitors will have no way to use the form.
Jordan Walker
Posted 709 days ago 8Those are all greats way to prevent spam on blogs. It would be great if there was a troll watch too!
.-= Jordan Walker´s last blog ..StrongMorals.com =-.
blackgown
Posted 709 days ago 7i use akismet.. its cool
Sidra Blue
Posted 709 days ago 6Good list. We have been using reCaptcha a lot, but it lacks the freedom to style its look completely. Can’t wait to check out the rest.
Ozh
Posted 711 days ago 5Akismet, Mollom & Defensio have nothing to do with Captchas. Actually they’re quite the opposite.
On the captcha side, I like the concept of this one: http://scr.im/ozh (but I’m biased, I did it)
.-= Ozh´s last blog ..Review: WordPress and Ajax Book =-.
Joshua
Posted 711 days ago 4I’ve found honey pots combined with good server and client side validation/sanitization of user input to be very effective at eliminating SPAM. This also has the benefit of avoiding the usability and accessibility concerns that go with CAPTCHAs.
I would like to have seen a mention of those concerns along with a few links at the very least to resources dealing with various SPAM fighting strategies and their pros/cons.
jason harrey
Posted 711 days ago 3I had my website without captcha in contact form. I got lots of spamming mail in my account everyday. Then one of my friend suggested me to use captcha in contact form. currently i am using Recaptcha in my contact form and I am satisfy with this tool.
Dean Saliba
Posted 711 days ago 2I use Akismet and I find that this helps me, but then again my blogs are still quite small so maybe I’ll need to bring in reinforcements when they start growing.
I never knew what CAPTCHA meant. I just assumed it meant “capture” I had no idea it was an acronym. :)
.-= Dean Saliba´s last blog ..Adbrite, The Poor Man’s Adsense? =-.
Jack
Posted 711 days ago 1Really useful collection…