Problem with honeypot fields

  • Resolved skirridsystems

    (@skirridsystems)


    11 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hi Guido,

    I have been receiving problem reports from users that the submit button doesn’t work. Normally I can’t reproduce these, but I have now got it to happen on Edge. It seems that if you use the browser autofill then it can populate the hidden honeypot fields too, which causes the form submission to fail silently. I turned debug on and got ‘Error: hidden field’ and then looked at what was in the POST data. Turning off the CSS hiding also shows this happening in the form itself. In my case, Edge populated the hidden vscf_last_name field with the same value as in the name field. I don’t know why this happens because the random element should break the matching algorithm, but maybe Edge uses some fuzzy logic to do the matching.

    To test further I cleared Edge’s autocomplete cache and tried again. The first time I submitted the form it worked OK, the second time it used the value for the name field to autofill the last_name field and I got the error again.

    Setting the autocomplete=off attribute on the <form> element should disable all autocomplete – not generally needed for a contact form. I don’t know whether Edge will respect it and I haven’t had time to try it.

    Looking at Ninja Forms, they do have a honeypot, but its name is just nf-field-hp, so it won’t trigger the name autofill. The only other solution I can see is to add an option to disable the honeypot :-/

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author Guido

    (@guido07111975)

    Hi,

    Thank you for informing me and for all the testing you’ve did. I’ve added tabindex="-1" to both fields so they will be skipped when using tab to navigate or when a screen reader reads the form, but apparently Edge doesn’t work like that. Maybe it’s because both fields contain “name”? I could change name/ID of both fields and see what happens.

    Guido

    Plugin Author Guido

    (@guido07111975)

    Hi,

    I have added a full address in Edge and changed the name / ID of both hidden fields in random ones. Unfortunately Edge added the postal code in first hidden field and city in second hidden field.

    Looks like you can only fully control the input of both hidden fields when choosing certain names that are clearly not part of an address, such as “username” and “photo”.

    Guido

    Thread Starter skirridsystems

    (@skirridsystems)

    Hi Guido,

    Yes, it looks like other forms don’t try to make the name/id of their honeypot fields look like anything else. Ninja Forms uses id="nf-field-hp-data.id" name="nf-field-hp" .

    Alternatively, setting autocomplete="off" for those input, or even for the form itself, may help.

    Simon

    Plugin Author Guido

    (@guido07111975)

    Hi,

    While testing with 2 random names/ID’s the postal code and city from my saved address were added. I guess Edge thinks those fields can be used for that info. Maybe removing one hidden field already fixes that. Will try this later. And yes, I can also add autocomplete="off" to both fields. Don’t want to add this for whole form, because I can imagine some users like this feature.

    Guido

    Plugin Author Guido

    (@guido07111975)

    Hi Simon,

    I have updated plugin and changed the name/ID of both honeypot fields. Did not add autocomplete="off"? because I’ve read that most browsers ignore this when it comes to autofill. Can you do some testing and let me know if this fixes your issue?

    Guido

    I don’t even see the word “honeypot” anywhere in this plugin. Is it now broken? I get…. Error: transient

    Plugin Author Guido

    (@guido07111975)

    H James,

    Honeypots are the hidden anti-spam fields. I’ve also replied in your own topic.

    Guido

    Plugin Author Guido

    (@guido07111975)

    Hi Simon / @skirridsystems

    Can you confirm it’s fixed now?

    Guido

    Thread Starter skirridsystems

    (@skirridsystems)

    Hi Guido,

    Yes! Looks good to me ??

    Thanks for fixing,

    Simon

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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