Bots will either collect all your valuable data, or will spam your app with self-promoting or harmful content. Sites use captcha with varying rates of success.
It may seem easy to just put all the content behind a login. But, new startups will have to entice new users to join, give them a free taste. And, it’s not that hard to program a bot to login.
The problem
The “invisible” reCaptcha just does not work.
I’ve used it for years. I’ve read many developers complaining about it.
It is good to secure your free API endpoints from being used from outside of your site’s domain. That’s it.
It unfortunately does not catch any bots that scrape your website.
This is very annoying! Sometimes you even have to do it 2 or 3 times.
The solution
CloudFlare.com has used HCaptcha in the past. Every time I logged in, I had to solve the puzzle by clicking on all the correct images, twice. I kind of dreaded going to that site.
Recently, I noticed they didn’t have that. They built their own “invisible” solution.
It’s available to everyone! I’m going to try it and see if it’s more effective than Google’s.