Like most (all?) WordPress bloggers, I use Akismet to trap spam.
The nice thing about Akismet is that it works completely in the background. It simply checks each comment for spam characteristics, like multiple links, certain *ahem* keywords, and so forth. It’s very accurate and it obviates the need to use CAPTCHAs — you know, those things where you have to type in the distorted letters to prove you’re not a spambot. It’s so accurate, in fact, that I don’t even need to moderate comments. Which I prefer, because isn’t it fun to see your comment pop up on the screen as soon as you hit the post button? Plus I would rather give you the benefit of the doubt than assume you’re a spambot!
Lately a lot of spam has been falling though the trap, though, and when I did some experimenting I got weird error messages. I don’t know if it’s just not playing nice with the WP 2.6 upgrade or what. In any case, I sent a message to the guys at Akismet. Haven’t heard back yet, but I’m still hopeful. In the meantime I regretfully enabled comment moderation for first-time commenters. Believe me, your comments are very welcome, and as soon as this thing gets fixed, I’ll turn moderation back off.
Anyone else having problems with Akismet? Any other issues or questions about comment moderation or CAPTCHAs?
5 Comments
Oh good heavens, not you too. Well, my problem seems to have been fixed now as long as you use the web.me address rather than the web.mac one. I hope you get this sorted soon.
I had a lot of trouble with Akismet before I moved to my new address a couple months ago. It’s working fine so far, but I get so few spam even in Akismet that I think the spambots haven’t found me yet.
I’ve been on Twitter only a week and already get creepy porn spam followers there. Yuck.
Thanks for this post - yesterday I actually had to disable comments for one of my posts because it got hit (and the hits went through) by spam 12 times in an hour! It looked like the same bot and I identified it as Spam for Askimet…and yet Askimet kept letting it get through. I figured it had found some way around the Spam filter and kept using it. No other posts had problems, however. Hope you’ll let us know what the people at Askimet have to say!
Ann, I know. I left you a comment. :-)
Veronica, yeah, Twitter is a bit rough around the edges still. But it sure is fun, innit?
Wendy, interesting! 90% of the spam I was getting was all on one post, too. It did occur to me to simply disable comments on that post, but in the end I (obviously) decided to go the other route. I am nearly certain this is due to a bug in the plugin, not a problem with the Akismet database or some new type of spambot. I will keep you posted!
This happened to me recently too! It’s slowed down somewhat but I got a good helping of spam, cycling around three or four posts for each of my blogs.