Most email providers today (such as AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, Comcast, etc) provide a service that checks each arriving email to see if it’s spam. One check they do is to have their bots “test” random links in the email. They test it by following the link (just as if you had clicked the link) to make sure it goes to a real page.
This is a problem for GroupValet emails because we have Signup and Decline links in our emails. When the bots test these links, that will cause the recipient to be signed up or declined.
We have hidden areas on our emails that act as “honeypots” for these bots. A honeypot is a space that looks blank to a human but has a link behind it to attract a bot. It’s like a trap that tricks them into going to that link. When we find that a honeypot has been triggered we block the IP Address of whoever hit that honeypot.
Sometimes real people accidentally hit these honeypot areas in the emails. They look like blank areas, but if a person accidentally taps or clicks in that blank space, it can trigger the honeypot. When that happens, we block that IP Address, which blocks the real person.
The next time someone from that IP Address tries to access our site, they will see the screen asking if they are a robot. Once they prove they are not a bot, we clear their IP Address so they won’t be blocked again.
This "clearing process" can involve checking a box and then validating a number of images. We actually don’t control what that clearing process is. We use a service called “recaptcha”, which is used by most websites. So we can’t control what images are displayed, or the process to prove they are a real person.
But once you verify that you are not a robot, you should not see that message again, provided you access GroupValet from the same IP address. If you access GroupValet from various locations, you could get this message multiple times.