Imagine a trap designed to lure in spam bots, not honey-loving bears. That’s the essence of a honeypot form. It works by adding an extra form field that’s completely hidden from human users. This field, often called a “honeypot field,” is typically disguised using CSS or Javascript.

How Does it Work?

Spam bots, unlike humans, blindly fill out every form field they encounter.

When they hit your form, they’ll fill in the honeypot field along with the real data. Here’s the magic:

• Honeypot Triggers: Your form’s code is programmed to check the honeypot field during submission.
• Human Users Sail Through: If the honeypot field is empty (because a human user wouldn’t see it), the form submission proceeds normally.
• Spam Bots Get Caught: If the honeypot field is filled, the code identifies it as a bot submission and rejects it.

Setting Up Your Honeypot Form:

The good news is you don’t need to be a coding whiz to use honeypots.

Many website builders and form creation tools offer built-in honeypot functionality.

Here’s a general approach for manual setup:

Create the Honeypot Field:

Add a standard input field to your form HTML, like this:

<input type="text" id="honeypot" name="honeypot" style="display: none;">

Hide the Field:

Use CSS to style the field with properties that make it invisible, like this:

#honeypot {
  display: none;
  width: 0px;
  height: 0px;
}

Catch the Bots:

Implement Javascript code to check the honeypot field value during form submission.

Here’s an example:

function validateForm() {
  var honeypot = document.getElementById("honeypot");
  if (honeypot.value !== "") {
    alert("Sorry, this form appears to be automated. Please submit a manual inquiry.");
    return false;
  }
  // rest of your form validation logic here
  return true;
}

Remember

Honeypots are a strong defense, but not foolproof. Particularly sophisticated bots might evolve to bypass them.

Consider using honeypots alongside other security measures for a multi-layered approach.