Turn on Captcha for spam prevention or failed logins

If your Confluence Cloud instance is open to the public (you allow anonymous users to add comments, create pages, etc) you may find that automated spam is being added, in the form of comments or new pages.

You can deter automated spam by enabling Captcha. Captcha is a test that can distinguish a human being from an automated agent such as a web spider or robot. When Captcha is on, anonymous users will see a distorted picture of a word, and must enter it in a text field before they can:

• Add a comment

• Create a page

• Edit a page

• Send a request to Confluence administrators

To enable Captcha for anonymous users — and/or to enforce Captcha for all users or members of particular groups — raise a support request.

Captcha can also be enabled to display after a certain number of failed login attempts. The default number in Confluence Cloud is 3 attempts, but can be changed in settings.

To configure Captcha for failed logins:

1. Select the wheel icon () in the top-right corner to open Confluence administration.

2. Find Settings > Security in the left-hand navigation.

3. Select Security configuration.

4. Find CAPTCHA on login.

5. Check the Enable box to turn it on.

6. Enter the number of maximum authentication attempts allowed.

7. Select Save at the bottom of the page.