How a honeypot field works
The form includes an extra field that is hidden from people, for example with CSS. People never see it, so they leave it empty. Many spam bots fill in every field they find. When a submission arrives with the honeypot field filled in, the form treats it as spam.
Pros and cons
- Pro: respondents do not need to solve a puzzle.
- Pro: it is simple to add.
- Con: bots that read the page carefully can skip the field.
- Con: if it is not hidden correctly, screen reader users or browser autofill can fill it in by mistake.
Honeypot field vs CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA asks the visitor to prove they are human, or scores their behavior in the background. A honeypot is invisible to the visitor. Many forms use both.
Spam protection in FormFlux
FormFlux protects forms with reCAPTCHA v3, which scores visitors in the background without a puzzle, and with rate limiting. These controls are part of the Pro plan. On every plan, you can mark any response as spam.