Honeypot Questions for Bot Detection

A honeypot is an ordinary question that respondents never see. Domandata keeps it in the survey page, where automated form fillers find it and answer it like any other field, but hides it from people: it isn't visible, it can't be reached with Tab or a click, and screen readers skip it. A person leaves it blank without ever knowing it was there, so any answer is a strong sign the response came from a bot.

A response that answers a honeypot is flagged Honeypot Question Answered (critical) for review. Nothing is blocked: the respondent finishes normally and the response is saved, so you decide what to do with it during cleaning.

1. Step 1: Add a question with a tempting title. Bots fill fields that look like contact or profile details, so titles like “Website”, “Company”, or “Fax number” work well. Put it on a page with real questions.

   Step 1: Add a question

2. Step 2: Open Options and turn on Honeypot. The switch, marked Beta, is under Fraud Detection in the question's Options. The question card then shows a Honeypot label, and its Required control disappears because a honeypot is never required.

3. Step 3: Check it in Preview. Page View shows the honeypot in a dashed box so you can find it. Runner View shows the page exactly as respondents see it, without the honeypot.

   Step 3: Preview the survey

Honeypot is available on Text Response, Multiple Choice, Grid, Slider, Constant Sum, and MaxDiff questions — the types a form-filling bot actually fills in, and that record nothing until someone answers them. A honeypot Slider always carries its typed-number box (even if you turned that box off), because the slider handle alone isn't a field a bot can fill.

Other types aren't offered for one of two reasons. Some would catch nothing: Dropdown, Ranking, Card Sort, Conjoint, Tree Test, Text Highlighter, Signature, Heatmap, and File Upload need clicks, drags, or uploads that form fillers don't make. Others would do something on their own even while hidden: Audio asks for the microphone, Text Chat and Audio Conversation call an AI model, reCAPTCHA loads Google, and Reaction Time listens to the keyboard.

• Never seen or reached: the question takes up no space, adds no gap between questions, and can't receive focus or clicks. Right-to-left surveys get no sideways scrolling from it.
• Never filled for them: browsers and password managers (1Password, LastPass, Bitwarden, Proton Pass) are told not to autofill it.
• Never holds anyone up: it is never required, and its validation rules (such as an email format) are skipped, so the Next button always works.
• Never numbered or counted: it takes no question number, and a page that would contain only honeypots is merged with the next page so nobody sees a blank screen. A blank honeypot doesn't count toward the missing-answers check.

• The honeypot keeps its own column in exports, so you can see what was typed or chosen. Leave it out of substantive analysis.
• Quality Review, the export's quality columns, and response-quality alerts name the honeypot question that was answered.
• The JSON codebook marks the question as a honeypot, and the OSF verification certificate lists honeypot questions among the checks that were active.
• Silicon Sample leaves honeypots blank, the way a real respondent would.
• If Domandata is connected to Claude or another AI assistant, it can turn a question into a honeypot (or back) and confirm which questions are honeypots.

• Maintaining Survey Response Quality
• reCAPTCHA Survey Verification
• Attention and Manipulation Checks
• Quality Review Queue and Cleaning Log