captcha spam issues

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
I've set up recaptcha on a jobs listing application I built with codeigniter. For some reason, we're getting a good bit of spam anyway. barring a a human spammer actually inputing the spam herself, is there any reason for me to think that a bot is somehow getting through it?

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
There is software available that attempts to convert a CAPTCHA image to text (for example http://www.alixaxel.com/wordpress/2007/0...a-decoder/), but as far as I know they are fairly resource intensive, and usually only used to test the quality of the CAPTCHA. It's probably not worth it for spamming the same site repeatedly. Maybe you could keep a record of IP and user agent, and make a more accurate conclusion yourself?

I've seen some sites that simply ask "Are you a person?", and you just type "yes" in the box. It's only really a deterrent as it's easy bypass, but you might notice a change in the pattern. Is the Email definitely coming from your Web site and not being directly sent to the Email account you speak of?

Maybe you should consider obfuscating your CAPTCHA more.

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
yeah, it's definitely going straight into my database. If it was just one every once in a while, but it's sometimes 10 a day, sometimes none. I just can't figure out how any bot could do it. Maybe I'm missing something silly. I'll try checking the logs and seeing if I can learn anything from the ip.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
Another thing you might want to consider is taking simple precautions against spam, by checking it for common words that appear in spam. It's not 100% effective, and may be a bit primitive but it may help. Even if the system just marks it as being potential spam, it might be useful.

There are hundreds of services out there that can guess with a fair amount of accuracy if an Email is spam, or where you can check the IP address and see if it belongs to a known spammer, but I'll leave you to pursue that if you think it's the route you want to take.