Configuring Captcha for Spam Prevention

You need to be a Confluence administrator to configure Captcha for spam prevention in Confluence.

If your Confluence site is open to the public you may find that automated spam is being added, in the form of comments or new pages.

You can configure Confluence to deter automated spam by asking users to prove that they are human before they are allowed to:

• Sign up for an account.
• Add a comment.
• Create a page.
• Edit a page.
• Send a request to the Confluence administrators.

Captcha is the technical term for a test that can distinguish a human being from an automated agent such as a web spider or robot. You can read more about Captcha on Wikipedia.

When Captcha is switched on, users will need to recognise a distorted picture of a word, and must type the word into a text field. This is easy for humans to do, but very difficult for computers.

Screenshot above: Example of a Captcha test

You can configure Confluence to enforce Captcha for certain types of users. You can exempt logged-in users (they will have completed a Captcha when they signed up) or members of particular groups.

By default, Captcha for spam prevention is disabled. If you enable it, the default is that Captcha for spam prevention will apply to anonymous users only. Only anonymous users will have to perform the Captcha test when creating comments or editing pages. Captcha images will not be shown to logged-in users.

To enable Captcha for spam prevention in Confluence:

1. Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console':

   • Choose Browse > Confluence Admin. The 'Administrator Access' login screen will be displayed.
   • Enter your password and click Confirm. You will be temporarily logged into a secure session to access the 'Administration Console'.
2. Select 'Spam Prevention' from the 'Configuration' menu on the left.
3. Turn on Captcha by clicking the 'ON' link.
4. If you want to disable Captcha for certain groups:
   • Select 'No one' if you want everyone to see Captchas.
   • Select 'Signed in users' if you want only anonymous users to see Captchas.
   • If you want everyone to see Captchas except members of specific groups, select the 'Members of the following groups' and enter the group names in the text box.
     You can click the magnifying-glass icon to search for groups. Search for all or part of a group name and click the 'Select Groups' button to add one or more groups to the list.
   • To remove a group from the list, delete the group name.
5. Click the 'Save' button.

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