Akismet Blocks Five Hundred Billion Spam and Counting

by Christopher Finke July 6, 2020 2 comments

It was happening while you ate dinner. While you were at work. While you were on vacation, going for a walk, or daydreaming. It was certainly happening while you were sleeping. All this time — for nearly 15 years — Akismet has been catching and blocking spam from appearing on websites and forums the world over, and Akismet just reached an important milestone: over 500 billion pieces of spam blocked, and counting.

Saving countless hours for you

Think about that number: five hundred billion spam comments blocked — and not just on WordPress sites! Akismet has been ensnaring spam on other platforms including Drupal, Joomla, and more, saving countless hours of moderation time and frustration for millions of people around the world.

To the future!

If you need spam protection for your website or forum, Akismet is here to help. Free up time spent tweezing spam comments and allow Akismet to catch and block it for you. Here’s to the next 500 billion!

Version 4.1.6 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Josh Smith June 4, 2020 1 comment

Version 4.1.6 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:

  • Disable “Check for Spam” button until the page is loaded to avoid errors with clicking through to queue recheck endpoint directly.
  • Add filter “akismet_enable_mshots” to allow disabling screenshot popups on the edit comments admin page.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1.5 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Stephane Daury April 29, 2020
Version 4.1.5 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:
  • Based on user feedback, we have dropped the in-admin notice explaining the availability of the “privacy notice” option in the AKismet settings screen. The option itself is available, but after displaying the notice for the last 2 years, it is now considered a known fact.
  • Updated the “Requires at least” to WP 4.6, based on recommendations from https://wp-info.org/tools/checkplugini18n.php?slug=akismet
  • Moved older changelog entries to a separate file to keep the size of this readme reasonable, also based on recommendations from https://wp-info.org/tools/checkplugini18n.php?slug=akismet
To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1.4 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Christopher Finke March 17, 2020 3 comments

Version 4.1.4 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:

  • The plugin will now only redirect to the Akismet setup screen upon plugin activation if the plugin was activated manually from within the plugin-related screens, to help users with non-standard install workflows (like WP-CLI).
  • We’ve updated the layout of the initial setup screen to be more readable on small screens.
  • We’ve reduced the amount of code that runs when no API key has been entered yet.
  • We’ve improved the readability of the comment history entries.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1.3 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Christopher Finke October 31, 2019

Version 4.1.3 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:

  • We’ve improved the activation and setup process.
  • We’ve fixed a bug that could have allowed an attacker to make you recheck your Pending comments for spam.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1.2 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Christopher Finke May 14, 2019 2 comments

Version 4.1.2 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:

  • We’ve reduced the number of API requests made by the plugin when attempting to verify the API key.
  • We’re now including additional data in the pingback pre-check API request to help make stats more accurate.
  • We fixed a bug that was enabling the “Check for Spam” button when no comments were eligible to be checked.
  • We’ve improved Akismet’s AMP compatibility.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1.1 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Christopher Finke January 31, 2019 3 comments

Version 4.1.1 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:

  • We updated the “Setup Akismet” notice so that it resizes to fit all screen sizes.
  • We improved the Akismet settings page so the “Save Changes” button is only highlighted when a change has been made.
  • We fixed a bug that could have been causing the count of spam comments displayed on the dashboard to be up to an hour old rather than the current count.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Christopher Finke November 12, 2018

Version 4.1 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available and contains the following changes:

  • We added a WP-CLI method for retrieving Akismet stats: wp akismet stats
  • Akismet now hooks into the new “Personal Data Eraser” functionality from WordPress 4.9.6 to ensure that any personal data stored by Akismet is erased when requested.
  • We’ve updated the plugin to more quickly clear outdated alert messages.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.