Court data site to enhance security

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The Wisconsin court system will start using a security feature on the website used to access circuit court records.

The court data site will start using CAPTCHAs on Sept. 28, according to a news release. The technology will help the website determine whether a visitor is a human or a “screen scraper” program that attempts to extract circuit court data from the site.

Users will have to answer a question the first time they perform the search. They will be asked another question after they’ve completed their 10th search, according to the news release. The CAPTCHA feature will be used on all search screens.

The court data site will generally ask users to identify images or objects such as food.

Screen scraping, according to the release, slows down the service for other users and can be used in scams proposing to remove court records from a website for payment. State circuit courts do no accept payment to remove court case information from the website. Follow @erikastrebel