Akismet Overloaded (Down?) & Slowing Blog...August 26th, 2007 I got over 2000 comments in my moderation queue, all spam. I was testing Akismet and it appears it is overloaded for quite sometime now and putting literally every comment in moderation queue (happens when it fails or when the connectivity to Akismet fails).
The Death of Akismet (WordPress Spam Prevention Plugin)?May 28th, 2006 Akismet is a spam prevention plugin from the WordPress author, Matt Mullenweg. It uses collective wisdom in filtering spams.
Facing a P0ker FloodMay 14th, 2006 This blog is being flooded with P0ker spam comments. Obviously they aren't getting through.
WordPress Akismet Plugin Update For Better Spam / Ham IdentificationApril 30th, 2006 I have been using Akismet plugin for about a month. One of the key deficiency of the plugin is occassional false positives (falsely flagging non-spam as spam) & false negatives (failing to identify spam).
Is Link in Lieu of Payment From Education & Non-Profit Sites Acceptable?January 30th, 2008 Imagine Company X provides a service. X is nice enough to offer it for free to education and non-profit sites.
What Matt Mullenweg (WordPress Author) Knows About You (WordPress & Akismet Plugin User)April 8th, 2006 I took a look at the data we are sending to Akismet, a WordPress plugin for comment spam protection, for each comment submitted on your blog, if you use this plugin for comment spam prevention. I have recently started using Akismet, a WordPress plugin from WordPress author Matt Mullenweg.
The Big Void In WordPress Comment Spam ProtectionJanuary 16th, 2007 I have experiemented with all the available WordPress plugins for comment spam protection including but not limited to Bad Behaviour, Spam Karma 2, Akismet and built-in WordPress features like blacklists and moderation queue. We have to deal with tens of thousands of spam everyday.
Look What Akismet Approved Today aka Spams Which Fools AkismetDecember 20th, 2007 Akismet continues to get in spams approved these days while sometimes rejecting valid comments on my blog. To give you a small sample, here are some of the comments which passed through Akismet plugin today -
Note: Adult stuff ahead...
Comment Guard Plugin Updated with New FeaturesAugust 29th, 2007 We have the Comment Guard plugin on all of our blogs with the latest version. Comment Guard is our fool-proof solution to eliminate comment spam from automated bots, which constitute over 90% of comments.
Review: Top 9 Wordpress Anti-Spam PluginsNovember 22nd, 2008 While writing an article about the best security plugins of Wordpress, I felt the need to touch another very important security issue for the bloggers, and i.e. Anti Spam Plugins.
List of Files Changed in WordPress 2.03 wrt. WordPress 2.02June 1st, 2006 WordPress 2.03 has been released. Here are the list of files changed in WordPress 2.03 in comparison with WordPress 2.02 for those planning on selective upgrade:
wp-admin/admin-db.php
wp-admin/admin-functions.php
wp-admin/admin.php
wp-admin/cat-js.php
wp-admin/categories.php
wp-admin/edit-comments.php
wp-admin/edit-form-advanced.php
wp-admin/edit-form-ajax-cat.php
wp-admin/edit-form-comment.php
wp-admin/edit-link-form.php
wp-admin/edit-page-form.php
wp-admin/edit-pages.php
wp-admin/edit.php
wp-admin/import/mt.php
wp-admin/inline-uploading.php
wp-admin/link-categories.php
wp-admin/link-import.php
wp-admin/link-manager.php
wp-admin/list-manipulation-js.php
wp-admin/list-manipulation.php
wp-admin/moderation.php
wp-admin/options-discussion.php
wp-admin/options-general.php
wp-admin/options-misc.php
wp-admin/options-permalink.php
wp-admin/options-reading.php
wp-admin/options-writing.php
wp-admin/options.php
wp-admin/page-new.php
wp-admin/plugin-editor.php
wp-admin/plugins.php
wp-admin/post.php
wp-admin/profile-update.php
wp-admin/profile.php
wp-admin/templates.php
wp-admin/theme-editor.php
wp-admin/themes.php
wp-admin/upgrade-schema.php
wp-admin/upgrade.php
wp-admin/user-edit.php
wp-admin/users.php
wp-comments-post.php
wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php
wp-content/plugins/wp-db-backup.php
wp-includes/cache.php
wp-includes/capabilities.php
wp-includes/classes.php
wp-includes/comment-functions.php
wp-includes/default-filters.php
wp-includes/functions-compat.php
wp-includes/functions-formatting.php
wp-includes/functions-post.php
wp-includes/functions.php
wp-includes/kses.php
wp-includes/links.php
wp-includes/pluggable-functions.php
wp-includes/registration-functions.php
wp-includes/template-functions-general.php
wp-includes/template-functions-links.php
wp-includes/vars.php
wp-includes/version.php
wp-login.php
Note: The files are hyperlinked to WordPress trunk source codebase.
WordPress Comment Spamming - Over 50% Contributed by Top 100 IP AddressesMay 29th, 2006 I briefly reviewed my corpus of 4569 comment spams in my Akismet queue. Of them over 53% of the spam has been contributed by Top 100 spamming IP addresses.
Waiting For 20, 000th Spam in 7 DaysJune 3rd, 2006 I have been getting a deluge of spams in the last 7 days or so, 19434 spams so far in Akismet queue of this blog alone. However something very interesting happened.
Meta-Review of WordPress Matt's Automattic(sic) Spam StopperOctober 31st, 2005 Matt, author of WordPress blogging software, has released an anti-spam plugin for WordPress - Automattic Spam Stopper (now renamed as AKismet)
Bad Behavior, a competing rather effective comment spam prevention plugin, author nicknamed IOError posted a review which points out some obvious downsides of such centralized spam filtering mechanisms like:
1. Privacy concern - all your comments are send to Matt's server for human inspection
2.
On Comment Guard - WordPress Comment Spam Prevention PluginJanuary 18th, 2007 Yesterday I talked about developing a comment spam prevention plugin with zero false positives. I am currently using it on all of our blogs.
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April 7th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
I hope that you enjoy using Akismet! It truly is a great anti-spam plugin. And, since Akismet’s accuracy grows with its user base, the best is yet to come!
April 8th, 2006 at 12:00 am
How does it grow? Is it using Neural Net or GA?
April 8th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Well, the theory is that, with more users, there will be more false positives and false negatives submitted for evaluation.
Once you mark an “approved” comment as “spam”, or a “spam” comment as “not spam”, it is submitted to Akismet’s server, analyzed and evaluated by the Akismet engine, and used to improve its accuracy. It is by this principle function that most new comment spam waves are stopped within minutes by Akismet.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:24 am
I’m not sure how the evaluation is done. They constantly refer to it as the “secret sauce” of Akismet. I do know, however, that the process of analysis and evaluation used to be done manually by Matt when Akismet was in the testing stages, but that process has now been fully automated.
April 8th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
[...] I took a look at the data we are sending to Akismet, a WordPress plugin for comment spam protection, for each comment submitted on your blog, if you use this plugin for comment spam prevention. I have recently started using Akismet, a WordPress plugin from WordPress author Matt Mullenweg. I have to say I was surprised at the copious amount of data, some sensitive, being sent to Matt’s server for handling every single comment. [...]
April 25th, 2006 at 9:40 am
This plug in did not amaze me. It wrongly filtered a normal comment as spam.
April 28th, 2006 at 4:49 am
Leion,
That doesn’t surprise me. I too had several legitimate comments marked as spam. I am however still giving it some leeway in the hope it will improve.
April 30th, 2006 at 10:07 am
[...] I have been using Akismet plugin for about a month. One of the key deficiency of the plugin is occassional false positives (falsely flagging non-spam as spam) & false negatives (failing to identify spam). As a result I need to occassionally check Akismet Spam tab (under Manage) to identify any false positives. Spams / hams are very much context sensitive. Comments out of context are often a surefire indication of spam. What may sound like a reasonable comment in the Akismet tab may turn out to be a spam with proper context. For example the following comment may appear very reasonable (actual comment received on my Consanesco Blog) ie. ham: Good point. There are however a few other things many people should be aware of. Most know that cord blood banks collect, process, test and store the donated umbilical cord blood for the public use, taking into account the great number of people who are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases each year. Therefore, cord blood banks look after expectant mothers, informing them about the importance of their umbilical cord blood and the possibility of helping some people who suffer from terrible diseases. Nevertheless, the information and sensitizing of the population is not fully achieved as in the case of simple blood donation. Cord blood stem cell transplants are considered in order to replace blood marrow transplants. The possibility of finding the match for the patients in need increases, as in 2001 the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies stated that roughly 20,000 American lives were saved through transplants of stem cells. I’ve covered some other aspects related to this topic on my website, Cord blood hub - please let me know if you find them useful. [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
I also recently started to use Akismet. I got a load of junk comments. No I don’t get any at all………my blog isn’t too popular