Akismet
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|
| Owner | Automattic |
|---|---|
| Created by | |
| Website | akismet.com |
| Alexa rank |
 4,398 (April 2014[update]) |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | 25 October 2005 |
| Current status | Online |
Akismet is a spam filtering service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating sites, and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Akismet is offered by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.
Launched on October 25, 2005, Akismet is said to have captured over 100 billion spam comments and pings as of October 2013.
The founder of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg decided to create Akismet so that his mother could blog in safety. In 2005, there were ongoing discussions about how to deal with comment spam and a few plug-ins were available. Mullenweg's first attempt was a JavaScript plug-in which modified the comment form and hid fields, but within hours of its launch, spammers downloaded it, figured out how it worked, and bypassed it. This is a common pitfall for anti-spam plug-ins; once they get traction, spammers pay attention and quickly figure out how to bypass them.
In late 2005, Mullenweg launched the Akismet plug-in for WordPress. Akismet (which stands for Automattic kismet) is a way of dealing with spam in aggregate, a crowd-sourced spam-fighting tool. Each time someone posts a comment to a participating website, Akismet checks it against all the comments in the database. If it's spam, it's deleted. If spam gets through and a user marks it as spam, the comment is added to the database so the pool of spam comments widens, making Akismet increasingly effective over time.
Akismet was originally developed to integrate with a plug-in for WordPress. The Akismet plug-in has been included by default in all WordPress builds since version 2.0 and activated in all WordPress.com-hosted blogs.
A public Akismet API has resulted in third-party plug-ins for other platforms. One is an official Akismet plug-in release for the open source internet forum software Discourse.
To use Akismet, it is necessary to obtain an API key. This key is necessary for a site to communicate with the Akismet servers.
Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, the Akismet plug-in is free software, although the code to the Akismet system itself (and the nature of the algorithm used) has not been released. The Akismet service is free for personal use and, as of March 2016, commercial plans start at $5/month.
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