Comments on: State of Web Spam

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:22:34 +0000

Will, Akismet is for web spam, not email spam. Most email programs have a spam filtering feature, I’d suggest you use that.

Also, regarding “adding a spammer to the Akismet database”: Akismet is not a blacklist nor a list of spammers. It takes into account all available information about each comment, and makes an individual decision based on the blog owner’s feedback. If you don’t want someone posting comments on your blog, just use the Spam button – Akismet will make a note of your preference and stop them from commenting on your blog in future (unless you subsequently use the Approve or Not Spam button).

By: Will K

Will K — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:05:32 +0000

How would I go about adding a spammer to the Akismet database? I had a local marketer use my contact form as a method to send me email about a local business (he spammed me, and when confronted, said it “wasn’t intended as spam”). He’s doing this to others in the local area every day, and is starting to annoy people and businesses. Unless it comes through as a comment to a post in WordPress, I can’t mark it as spam.

By: jennine

jennine — Tue, 04 May 2010 06:20:10 +0000

oh, i’ve been noticing the spam has been becoming more relevant, the human spammers must the explanation for getting through capchas and coming up with relevant comments. one of my most recent posts, there were some actual compelling comments, but the url was something like physician’s assistant. It was strange.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:39:09 +0000

I experience all of this. The worst is the pingbacks, because I like to keep them on to see who’s referencing my site, but I then have to spend so much time removing all these spammy ones. It sucks.

By: Akismet – State of Web Spam

Akismet – State of Web Spam — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:28:18 +0000

[...] is a great post over on the Akismet blog talking about some of the newest trends they have noticed in web spam since 2005. Among them are [...]

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 17:58:37 +0000

I have recently started getting some interesting spam, copied and pasted from comments that were already added by other people so it seems perfectly legitimate until I check their URL or do a Google search and find out I already have that comment on my site.

I’m glad Akismet filters out most of them for me, I actually had 2 that slipped through that stayed up for a week or two before I noticed.

By: jive

jive — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:19 +0000

Akismet is great for filtering comments and putting it in another container (spam), but it won’t stop it. You have to use other methods to prevent spam, which you rarely end up killing a possible valid comment. I’ve got a WordPress hack that is very good at keeping spam off my blog, the only thing I still see is spam with no links at all, which means they tried to put a link in the URL field, but I don’t accept those on my site. It makes me wonder if eventually spammers will just flood all the systems with all kinds of comments, links or no links, spam-keywords or regular words just to make the filters worthless.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:31:33 +0000

One weird mutant form I’ve seen lately is the verbatim duplication of a previously-approved comment; the spammer copies the text, slaps a name and a URL on it, and sends it through. Akismet so far has had no trouble spotting these, perhaps because the spammers haven’t had a whole lot of variety in their name/URL choices.

By: Philippines takes World’s Best Spammers title? | YugaTech | Philippines, Technology News & Reviews

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:21:51 +0000

[...] to the latest entry by Akismet in their “State of Web Spam“, the anti-spam service points out our exceptional skills in written English: Human-posted [...]

By: Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:02:29 +0000

Thanks for the fantastically free Akismet!

One thanks I have to give spammers is that they seem to use the exact same reply for every website they post on. Whenever I receive a post on my website, I put it in quotes in a Google search in order to see how many websites I find with the exact same phrase complete with the same miss-spellings.