At Waitwhile, we take security very seriously. One important security measure we have in place is detection and prevention of scripts and bots that could be used to flood your waitlists and booking calendars. We use Google's reCAPTCHA feature to keep malicious software from engaging in abusive activities on your Waitwhile flows, while not preventing your legitimate customers from using it.
However, there are instances where the reCAPTCHA challenges may be triggered unintentionally for some of your customers. This article will help you to to troubleshoot and resolve these false positive if they occur.
How do we use reCAPTCHA?
At Waitwhile, we're using the latest reCAPTCHA v3. Each customer that attempts to sign up to your public Waitwhile link will be assigned a score between 0.0-1.0.
By default, if the score is 0.5 or lower the user is suspected of being a bot, and in such cases Waitwhile will display an error message and they will not be allowed to complete the registration process.
This calculation usually works as intended, but there may be some instances where the score can be low even for legitimate users.
Why users may get a low reCAPTCHA score?
Here are some typical reasons:
Many customers are trying to join your waitlist from the same WiFi or IP address (e.g. at an event or conference)
Many customers are using the same browser or device to join your waitlist or schedule bookings (e.g. if you're using a shared Kiosk for registration)
customers are using a VPN or accessing your Waitwhile pages from countries that are associated with a high level of suspicious spam activity.
How to fix the reCAPTCHA issue?
You can modify the sensitivity level by going to Settings > Registration. Under Captcha bot protection, select a lower sensitivity from the dropdown menu.
We recommend only selecting Disabled as a last resort after lower sensitivity levels have been tested.
If you are on our Business or Enterprise plan, you can also utilize our API to adjust your location's reCAPTCHA score. This can be changed by calling the Update Location endpoint with the attribute recaptchaMinScore set to have a value between -1 and 1, or you can set it to -1 to disable it completely.
If using "Kiosk mode", we can assist in whitelisting your IP range to disable these security measures.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.