GUIDE – How To Fix Contact Form 7 reCaptcha v3 Bug

Two questions…

1) Did you mean version 5.1 of CF7, instead of 5.01?
2) When I tried designing the form for reCAPTCHA v3, I was told the recaptcha shortcode wasn’t needed. Do I need to put that shortcode back on the form template for the workaround to work?

Thanks @rtpharry, we went a bit deeper into this here https://soundst.com/2018/12/contact-form-7-recaptcha-spam-issues/ and added the link to your post as another solution.

We still want to use this plugin, the cost of replacging it in several hundred domains is daunting.

Thank you for the link to the soundst website. I decided to install the captcha plugin and move over to that instead. I was getting so much spam, it was unreal.

Is there a reason your instructions include generating new keys? If I already have v2 keys, can’t I just put those into the Invisible reCaptcha settings?

If you have kept your V2 keys, you can use them. I a first rush, I deleted my V2 keys after I created the V3 keys. Now I can delete my V3 keys… I try not to think about the thousands of work hours that have been created around the globe by this glitch.

@eehmke is correct. If you kept your V2 keys and never made the change to V3 you are fine. Most of us fully adopted V3 and then had to backtrack. We currently have the one line code fix on 200+ domains. We are hoping the developer addresses this. If not, we are going to add the new plugin and go back to V3. We simply have too many forms across too many domains to switch to another plugin.

many thanks to @locascioa and @rtpharry for posting your findings – I used your guide to correct about 20 sites and all seems to be fine – the spam has stopped and so has my phone from concerned school headteachers, upset at getting inappropriate emails.

much appreciated,

Jon