We are getting heaps of bogus signups, we need captcha. Is there any solution in the mean time? Thanks

This is a very basic and necessary feature!

Erin – you can absolutely limit access to form elements using conditional logic similar to this: http://nationbuilder.com/alexsm/limit_access_to_a_specific_page_with_permission_sets

Handy event spam tips aside, this has become a huge problem for us. I had 36 new events added overnight, and I have been deleting about 100 spam accounts per day from our People database. I can’t get any meaningful info from Google Analytics about how my legit users are interacting with my site, because each of these spam events receives hundreds of hits every day, and trying to get my board members involved in using Paths and Point People features is way harder when all they get are spam accounts.
With the lack of a Capcha or validation option, what can I do now to restrict access for email opt-ins? Can I set it up where people can’t sign up if they don’t have a first and last name, email, and enter a zip code that comes from the US?

@Erin, we do the same.
We use “Approved” and a Secondary Tag, which then allows folks to then chose a specific list of Events, or All.
Example here:
www.rogersparkfoodcoop.com
Click “News & Events”

Lilla, you have to Filter and then add the Tag. Works like a charm. See above.

Maybe @Taylor Pineiro will be kind enough to dig out the link to the instructions and provide them here.

Yea totally Erin, that’s a workaround. Unfortunately though it makes calendars where you want the “show all events” feature unusable, and continues to add “email opt-in” spammers to your database that count towards your NationBuilder bill and there is not easy way to filter for them either. Just like you can’t filter the ones that sign up via the login page and are impossible to really detect unless you’re looking at each email. Lots of potential to be paying for fake accounts.

I’ve been struggling with this too.

One thing I’ve done to keep my regular, non-spam users from being impacted is using an “approved” tag to display events. Anyone can still submit an event, but you can only see them on the front-facing events page if an admin adds the “approved” tag. While that hasn’t helped stop spammers (or traffic via direct link from wherever the spammer is listing it—Google analytics records about 1000 people hitting those fake pages every day), it does keep my actual customers from seeing them.

I went from a) to 2) on that last post because i realized it’s so important we need to talk numbers lol (typo actually)

Yea, so we keep getting spam signups that opt-in to email and a) there’s no way to weed them out less of sitting on the people tab picking them off one by one 2) they’re counting towards our emailable # so we’re also effectively paying for them. We are also getting spam event postings. 3) I don’t think email deliverability would be great if we tried to email them, of they would get our broadcasters and start spamming them too?

I think nations with significant spam problems should be able to enable something like re-CAPTCHA as an option. Regardless of what the argument is about “lower conversions,” I feel like the login pages are a different level of engagement — by the time most users get to these pages, they’re being allowed to post user-generated content or access the control panel, which means logically the bar can be higher (and should be). It’s not the same function as the signup form on a homepage, for example, where the goal is to convert email signups.

I think many nation’s problems would be solved with offering that option. It is honestly an issue I’ve been hearing for years and people are willing to move platforms to stop the spam – it’s annoying, and devalues the product experience ;)

I just had the same thing happen. dozens of TV programs posted to our calendar. and after I deleted them all, they keep popping up.

haha – Don – thank you! We totally hear you and will let you know as updates occur. I’ll delete two of your duplicate comments but leave that last one.

I didn’t intend to have this comment posted three times. Though considering the topic, maybe it’s appropriate to do so? :)

Our site is getting hit daily with spam, mostly on the volunteers sign-up page. I don’t understand why something like what Google offers (https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/invisible.html) isn’t already implemented? Something – anything – is better than nothing that we currently have.

Captcha is an important first step. We had to disable the user event submission feature which is a major bummer. Limiting the number of submissions over a period of time seems to make sense too.

Bump!
Our nation is experiencing a lot of spam specifically in the Volunteer Sign Up pages. I’m not actually sure that CAPTCHA would solve the problem. Many of the spammers don’t seem to be bots, but tend to present like human users (mostly from India) that are paid to continuously defeat CAPTCHA defenses and to specifically exploit the supporter vulnerability in the Volunteer sign-up feature.

I would suggest – and this could be a more simple fix – creating the ability for us to disallow link posting in textBoxes. CAPTCHA can be a cumbersome integration depending on how your form code is written but disallowing link posting is certain form textBoxes should be an easier fix.

At the moment we are having to follow out Volunteer pages and manually report every fake account in our nation and it’s wasting a lot of time and energy.

Captcha for all signup forms would save a lot of lost time. I usually get 2-3 signups per day on our Volunteer signup page from obvious spam sources. Reporting the user as spam just removes them, and then they’re back again the next day.

It is disappointing that captcha functionality cannot be added to our site, especially given the number of users that are experiencing the same problem. I hope it gets addressed soon as we have had to turn off our notifications due to so much spam, which has a big impact on our ability to engage our users.