A Comparative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Recaptcha V3 against Recaptcha V2, Hidden Fields, and Other Anti-Spam Techniques

Abstract

This work aims at comparing the performance of the following: reCAPTCHA v3, reCAPTCHA v2, hidden fields, and plain forms in the fight against bot activity. To do so, each of the methods was performed while in a WordPress staging environment and the robot was checked for its capability to bypass spam submissions. A preliminary evaluation of the results shows that plain forms and hidden fields do not prevent much automation; reCAPTCHA v2 has moderate effectiveness but is penetrable by advanced bots. On the other hand, reCAPTCHA v3 excels as per its efficiency standards; it employs behavioral analysis to rate user response instead of posing visible tests; thus, the bot access is immediately denied without affecting genuine users. However, user tracking becomes an issue of concern in reCAPTCHA v3 due to the vast amount of tracking done by this system. This study reveals that security, user experience, and privacy are important factors in anti-spam solutions; therefore this paper recommends v3 reCAPTCHA as the most effective solution despite the problems associated with its implementation and privacy considerations.