Failed reCAPTCHA check

Resolved swddanny
(@swddanny)

11 months ago

Hello,

We recently noticed that when trying to submit the form, we are getting an intermittent error – “Failed reCAPTCHA check”. Other times, submission is successful – “Your information has been submitted”.

The form has been working for quite a while with no issues until now.

Screenshot of error – https://snipboard.io/F6vt20.jpg

Location of the form on our Staging site in the Sidebar, towards the bottom – https://f2d613a84d.nxcli.io/blog/

We are using Google reCAPTCHA v3.

Can you please let me know if anything has changed with the reCAPTCHA code and how the plugin interacts with it, that would be causing this type of issue?

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

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Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 4 weeks ago

No notable changes on the CAPTCHA front in the last few versions.

Is this something persistently happening? or did it happen to happen once or twice, while still working as expected otherwise?

I know I just successfully submitted to it, without error.
Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 4 weeks ago
Hello,

It is still persistently happening. It works some of the time and doesn’t at other times. Today, it seems to be failing about 30% of the time. No discernible pattern. It has failed on multiple browsers, logged into the site, not logged into the site, if you submit immediately after page load or after waiting a bit.

If you have any additional questions, please let me know.
- This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by swddanny.
Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 4 weeks ago

Can you visit https://f2d613a84d.nxcli.io/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=ctct_forms&page=ctct_options_settings_support and enable the debugging checkbox? It’ll show a new submenu item where we store log data. Can you copy/paste what is hopefully there? I know we have some logging regarding CAPTCHA details, which may provide some leads.

Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 4 weeks ago

[2025-07-14T22:40:04.791928+00:00] reCAPTCHA.INFO: Failed to verify with Google reCAPTCHA [“Extra information”,[[[“timeout-or-duplicate”,”hostname-mismatch”,”action-mismatch”,”score-threshold-not-met”]]]] []

Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 3 weeks ago

Hmm.

My guesses are that it’s probably more the timeout/duplicate or the score threshold not being met that’s the source.

Is this happening on the live site but you’re testing/showing me on the staging? Curious if the API keys used are possibly configured for a different domain. However, may not be the case. Action should be hardcoded for when we send the request to Google.

Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 3 weeks ago

This is happening on both the Live site and Staging. Testing on and showing you Staging. API keys are correct and configured to allow for both the Live and Staging domains. If they weren’t, it would not work at all, ever.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 3 weeks ago

hmm again.

Have you or someone else been able to manually trigger the failure response? or are you getting notices about a failure sort of randomly more akin to organic potential signups?

I know we have a filter to adjust the threshold, but logically a site owner would probably want to make the threshold more strict than less strict. However, if there’s not a lot of spam coming through already, then it may be worth trying to reduce it slightly, especially if it’s failing for legit people.

Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 3 weeks ago

Sort of randomly more akin to organic potential signups.

It was first noticed by a visitor on the Live site that bought it to the attention of the site owner. He was able to reproduce the error on the first try. He then brought it to my attention, where I have tested and have been able to reproduce the error on Live and Staging as described above.

Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 3 weeks ago

I’ll leave this decision to you for the moment. Do you want to see if reducing the threshold slightly, from 5 to 4 helps? or do you want to leave things as is and observe it becomes more persistent of a problem that feels like actual humans are being affected?

I can help provide a snippet of code to reduce the threshold.

Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 3 weeks ago

Leaving it as is is unacceptable… Actual humans are being affected.

When you get a chance, please provide the snippet of code to reduce the threshold, so we can see if it resolves the issue.
Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 3 weeks ago
Couple corrections for myself, it’s on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, and default is 0.5

For the moment, we’re going to move it down to 0.4, and see how things go, based on some checks regarding score interpretation. If it gets worse, then reverse and go with 0.6.
```
function ctct_support_custom_recaptcha_threshold( $threshold ) {
	return 0.4;
}
add_filter( 'constant_contact_recaptcha_threshold', 'ctct_support_custom_recaptcha_threshold' );
```
I believe there should be some details and analytics available in https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin regarding the checks.
Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 2 weeks ago

Any news or updates here @swddanny ?

Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 2 weeks ago

@tw2113 Sorry for the delay. I had a couple things popup. I have this on my board and will get back to you by end of week. Thanks for your help.

Thread Starter swddanny
(@swddanny)

10 months, 2 weeks ago

@tw2113

I added the snippet you provided and performed several tests with 0.4 and 0.6. No change.

I believe the issue may be that the reCaptcha v3 token expires after 2 minutes and the plugin does not do anything to handle this scenario.

I am going to have them use reCaptcha v2 on the form so a User that is on a page for longer than 2 minutes can still submit the form.

Thanks for your help.

Plugin Contributor Michael Beckwith
(@tw2113)

The BenchPresser

10 months, 2 weeks ago

Hmm, interesting and something we should check on, to see if it’s something we can help with.

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