Introducing an AI-driven CAPTCHA for Help Center that offers improved accessibility and enhanced security | Zoho Desk | Product Update

Captcha protects your help center from fraud and abuse without creating friction.

What is a CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA is a test used in computing to verify that a user is human by requiring them to complete a challenge. It helps prevent bot attacks and reduce spam.

In a help center, this is implemented as a security feature. It is usually a distorted image with text or a brief audio sample that users are required to decipher and type in to prove they are human and not an automated bot. This feature is often used on forms like logins or ticket submissions within the help center to prevent spam or malicious activity.

Why does your Help Center need CAPTCHA?

If users are being prompted for CAPTCHA while using your help center, it could be due to any of the following reasons:

Bot prevention: CAPTCHA is often implemented to prevent automated bots from spamming or misusing the platform. If unusual traffic from a particular IP or user actions seems automated, the system might trigger a CAPTCHA challenge.

C - Completely

A - Automated

P - Public

T - Turing test (to tell)

C - Computers (and)

H - Humans

A - Apart

Types of CAPTCHA in the Help Center

1. Audio CAPTCHA

An audio CAPTCHA in a help center is an accessibility-focused verification tool designed to assist users with difficulty reading visual CAPTCHAs.

This type of CAPTCHA can be beneficial for visually impaired users or those with reading difficulties to help ensure that the help center remains accessible to all. Requiring users to listen to the audio and type what they hear helps prevent automated bots from submitting forms while providing a more inclusive experience for real users.

For example, the audio will ask a simple math problem, "What is 2+3?" the user must type the answer.

2. Image CAPTCHA

An image CAPTCHA in a help center is a visual verification tool designed to determine whether a user is a human or an automated bot. Typically, it presents users with an image containing distorted objects they need to identify or transcribe as part of a challenge-response test. This method effectively prevents spam and automated submissions, as bots often struggle to interpret images in the same way humans can.

Help Center CAPTCHA Enhancements

To reduce the frequency of CAPTCHA prompts, consider reviewing your security settings, monitoring user activity, and ensuring that your help center is user-friendly and accessible.

Administrators can allow unregistered users to submit tickets by disabling the preference setting Customers must sign in to your Help Center to submit Tickets in the Help Center Access Settings.

Enabling this preference is highly recommended as it will help prevent bots from creating spam tickets.

We noticed that unregistered users created spam tickets via the Help Center's Add Ticket form. To stop the spamming, we have facilitated the preference Show captcha for unregistered users in the add Tickets form in your portal.

We will enable this setting with the latest enhancements for all your portals. You can still turn off the preference in the Help Center Access Settings. We recommend enabling it to avoid ticket spamming.

You can still disable these preferences in the Help Center Access Settings.

To set the CAPTCHA permissions

Go to Setup > Channels > Help Center.
Select the Help Center for which you want to set access permissions.
Click Access Settings under the Help Center sub-menu.

4. On the Access Settings page, enable Show captcha for unregistered users in the add Tickets form option under Permissions.

5. Alternatively, you can enable Customers to sign in to your Help Center to submit the Tickets option.

Enabling this option will direct your customers to the login page, where they must sign in or register to access your Help Center.

Enabling this option provides an open Help Center; however, customers must sign in to submit their tickets.

6. The changes will be saved instantly.

Takeaway

Implementing image and audio CAPTCHAs helps maintain the integrity of the help center by reducing the likelihood of spam tickets and ensuring that your agents can prioritize genuine user inquiries.

For more information on CAPTCHA and how to configure them, please refer to the detailed help documentation on Working with My Area in Help Center

Please stay tuned for new updates in Help Center.

Cheers,

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team