Code development platform for open source projects from the European Union institutions
Admin message
We have sent all code.europa.eu users a personalised link to our User Survey. If you did not get this email, and wish to participate: contact the EC OSPO.
Welcome to the EU CAPTCHA Wiki! Here you can find information EU CAPTCHA, example implementations, the latest releases, supported Captchas, and technical documentation.
1.1. EU CAPTCHA
\ No newline at end of file
EU CAPTCHA embodies the results of ISA² Action 2018.08 EU-Captcha . The objective of this action is to offer to the Member States a CAPTCHA solution that is maintained, secure, user friendly and multilingual. It will be delivered as a component that can be operated as a service. Next to this managed service, there is also an open source project available, which you can deploy yourself.
1.2. What is a CAPTCHA?
A CAPTCHA is a test intended to distinguish human from machine input in order to thwart spam and automatic submission or extraction of data. It is a short online typing test that is easy for humans to pass but difficult for robotic software programs to complete—hence the test's actual name, Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA). The user is typically challenged to solve a puzzle that relies on expected capacities of the human brains but whose resolution is complex to automate.
1.3. Features
The objective of this solution is to offer to the Member States and other interested parties an open source CAPTCHA released under the EUPL (European Union Public License) that is maintained, secure, user-friendly and multilingual. This component can be operated as a service. The solution is published on GitLab so that it can be reviewed and maintained by the open source community.
A CAPTCHA is an essential component of information systems dealing specifically with human users, such as citizens. Having an open source secure and user-friendly CAPTCHA prevents from having to acquire or implement a specific one in several information systems. It allows for Member States to offer a consistent user experience throughout public services in Europe for a step-in administrative process that are perceived as complicated by many users. The EU CAPTCHA solution solves a common problem in a consistent and cost-effective way and solves a common problem that is not related to any particular sector or EU Member State. As a free to use and open source solution, EU CAPTCHA can be deployed by any interested party (public or private sector, within or outside the EU).
EU CAPTCHA is multilingual with support for all official languages from the European Union. It allows you to make a request to the included REST API using the desired language. You can include the unique language code of the desired language as a query parameter (see also Language table 1). By default, the configured language is English. If the CAPTCHA solution is used on an internationalized page, further configuring EU CAPTCHA can be helpful for the user. The user can select the preferred language themselves from a drop-down list, or the developer pre-configures this during deployment.
The textual CAPTCHAs are case sensitive. Users will have to insert the exact upper- and lower-case letters that the CATPCHA image is showing them.
The selected language has an impact on the alphabet used in the CAPTCHA image. For example, if EU CAPTCHA is configured to use Bulgarian, the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet will be used:
The EU CAPTCHA also supports users with visual impairments. The images that contain the textual CAPTCHA combination only use font color combinations that minimize complications for users with color blindness (red-green and blue-yellow). Moreover, EU CAPTCHA has support for spoken CAPTCHAs for all official languages from the European Union. Please note that the spoken CAPTCHAs do not support checks for upper- or lower-case letters during validation.
