Askimet for Spam

Posted on 27 Oct ’05 by Paul

I’ve been getting 20-30 spam comments a day for the last few days, which was really really grating on my nerves. So, it was clearly time for an upgrade in spam protection. It appears that I timed my need pretty well (although the increase in comment spam is probably related to some spamming bozos trying to break this new tool), since the people behind WordPress just release a new comment spam tool called Akismet.

It took a bit of finagling to get it up and running. The plugin installation is simple, but you need a WordPress API key to make it run. You can get those by signing up at WordPress.com. But, when I put in my email there, I didn’t get an “invite” back. So, I played a little more, then decided to see what the whole Flock tool was all about. So, I followed the Flock link, downloaded the tool, installed it, and sure enough was able to find a quicker way to set up a WordPress.com account and therefore get an API key.

So, now let’s see if I can stop the stupid spammers!!! :)

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3 Responses to Askimet for Spam

  1. Paul says:
    28 Oct ’05 at 9:34 am

    Since install (less than 18 hours ago), Askimet has stopped 62 spam comments.

    That’s pretty impressive!!!

    And it has meant 62 emails regarding “A new comment posted to your blog” never had to be sent to me, 62 comments never got held in the moderation queue, and I’m as happy as can be!

    Reply
  2. DizzyG says:
    31 Oct ’05 at 4:41 pm

    I’m going to get it now! Does it do anything fancy with the way it works? Meaning, does it help the CPU load in a good way, or just stop the spam from hitting the inbox? I would love to have my spam gone but I”ve found that even if I don’t see it, my server sure does. Not that it’s a huge load or anything, but it’s enough that I notice apache taking up more time than it should. I put a lot of apache rules on my server to stop some of the people that were hitting me with spam, even though it was getting filtered.
    You know?
    yeah…you know!
    let me know!

    Reply
  3. Paul says:
    31 Oct ’05 at 5:35 pm

    Nope, it doesn’t do anything to keep the spam from hitting the server. I’ve done the apache rules thing before too for a couple of chronic spam IPs, but the bastards are creative, so I can’t possibly keep up.

    I will say that it continues to work GREAT — 165 spam comments caught and counting.

    So, yeah, it won’t help with the server aspect directly — maybe it will a little since it won’t have to kick off a “you have comments” email??? I don’t know, just speculating.

    Reply