vaguely off-topic: are there any "prove you are a person" solutions other than captcha?

[Lost Admin]

In my very slow but ongoing effort to make a fully functional website based on noteself, I need a way for people to sign-up.

Obviously, I don't want it to be able to abused by scripts to automatically create new accounts. There are only two solutions I know of for this, neither is what I consider to be "nice".

Option 1 is the classic captcha. I think I can leverage the Google service, although I've not tried. Personally I hate captchas. And they keep getting worse.

Option 2 is the even more classic, give me your e-mail address and I'll send you a link in the e-mail to continue/confirm. This one is starting to run into some privacy laws (either by calling e-mail addresses personally identifiable information or with various do-not-contact-without-approval rules).

Is anyone aware of any dead-easy and very-low resource options for checking the validity of a sign-up?

Note: at present the "web server" I'm using can barely handle PHP (as in the store.php script is causing issues).

As step one is more of a proof of concept for me, I may simply make this a "send me a private message" sign-up but I would like a viable long-term option. 

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Tobias made a minimalist non-changing CAPTCHA that is quite tolerable & would likely deal with most cases unless you become a world star... it could be adapted.... http://tobibeer.github.io/tb5/#Contact ...

[Danielo Rodríguez]

What's the problem with the classic email confirmation ? If the user provides it they are agreeing on receive at least one email. You don't need to store the email address if that could be a problem.

Glad to see that you are building things around NS. Hope you showcase them soon !

[Lost Admin]

"Soon" is (currently) a loose term for me. I should be able to do what I want in a day but actually finding that day is proving challenging.

[Thomas Elmiger]

I know of a technique where you have a field that is hidden via CSS. People don’t put anything in it as it is invisible. Robots don’t realize it is hidden and fill in a value …
I have never implemented it myself but I use a Wordpress plugin with this technique and can confirm it is very effective. Maybe you could adapt Tobias’ solution in this way, asking “If you are a machine, please fill in your serial number here”.

All the best,
Thomas

[codacoder...@outlook.com]

On Wednesday, August 2, 2017 at 3:28:41 PM UTC-5, Thomas Elmiger wrote:

I know of a technique where you have a field that is hidden via CSS. People don’t put anything in it as it is invisible. Robots don’t realize it is hidden and fill in a value …

Precious :)

[Lost Admin]

On Wednesday, August 2, 2017 at 4:28:41 PM UTC-4, Thomas Elmiger wrote:

I know of a technique where you have a field that is hidden via CSS. People don’t put anything in it as it is invisible. Robots don’t realize it is hidden and fill in a value …
I have never implemented it myself but I use a Wordpress plugin with this technique and can confirm it is very effective. Maybe you could adapt Tobias’ solution in this way, asking “If you are a machine, please fill in your serial number here”.

Ha! just on funny value alone, I'll try that. 

 

All the best,
Thomas