topic Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

VanessaCampbell2 — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 18:59:46 GMT

Is there a way to block automated systems (bots) from submitting forms?

The public survey will be on a Government (Drupal) website as a link (opens a new tab/windows), not embedded.

The link is the same URL provide on Survey123 - Submitter Tab - Share this Survey, therefore it is hosted on https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/surveyid browser.

I am not familiar with "challenge-response testing". I am curious to known whether ArcGIS Online provides this capability/configuration on its sites, or is it a third-party app required to be embedded on the https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/surveyid browser page?

Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

JamesTedrick — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 23:07:00 GMT

Hi Vanessa,

There is not currently a challenge/response (also referred to as CAPTCHA, from one of the most popular systems). This is because such a system would only restrict the loading of a form; the feature service (submission endpoint) would not be protected by this and still could receive non-desired submissions.

Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

VanessaCampbell2 — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 13:16:30 GMT

Thanks for the explanation! Yes, our organization uses CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA works when we embedded the submission in an iframe, however, the organization is trying to move away from iframes as they are not the best for accessibility. I wonder are there any ESRI best practices for dealing with scam submissions?

Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

VickyS — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 11:17:20 GMT

Hi @VAN

Did you get a response from ESRI?

Maybe something like this would work.

How to validate text entered in survey against a l... - Esri Community

Thank you

Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

Teresa_Blader — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 00:04:36 GMT

Wow. We just had about 300 spam responses to a survey.

Any options at all for preventing something like this?

Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

ahargreaves_FW — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 20:16:08 GMT

Here's a cross-post from @ZacharySutherby outlining the issue and a potential work around, if acceptbale to your IT team.

Re: Public Survey: Blocking/Filtering Automated Systems

MollyJWick — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 20:38:25 GMT

I am having similar issues: Of the 400 survey responses we've gotten so far, we've had about 150 actual humans. The survey is supposed to be confidential, so it will be a hot mess trying to figure out what responses were spam and what were not. For ongoing data collection, I am wondering if requiring a generic verification question to proceed (ie having the user add numbers or something) could help reduce spam? Has anyone tried that?

Thanks,

Molly