Help: I’ve been tossed in spam limbo!
One of the things I enjoy about blogging is reading new comments on my posts. In fact, interacting with my readers and reading their valuable feedback is one of the things I enjoy the most about blogging. I also like to visit other blogs from time to time and leave comments on their site, as well.
Recently, an anti-spam software known as Akismet has been throwing a wrench in the works. At some point, for some reason, I was blacklisted on every site running Akismet. I was even tossed in the spam when I commented on my own blog when I was not logged in.
It would be one thing if it was just happening to me, but I’ve read about many fellow bloggers experiencing problems, as well. I have heard about them going into the spam on other blogs, and I have seen them go into my own spam. I wondered if someone would be actively attacking us, or if it was simply a bug on Akismet’s side.
My fellow jail inmates
Here are some of my fellow bloggers that I have personally seen tossed into the spam by Akismet; these are all legitimate bloggers, and I would never personally mark them as spam. Sorry if your comment took a while to show! These guys are all great bloggers and their sites are well worth visiting: Personal Finance By The Book, Andrew Hallam, Everyday Tips & Thoughts, My Financial Objectives, Wealth Pilgrim, Buy Like Buffett, Redeeming Riches, Wealth Informatics, Budgeting In the Fun Stuff, Bucksome Boomer’s Journey to Retirement, Money Reasons, Len Penzo, My Dollar Plan, Beating The Index, Happy Heart and Mind, DQYDJ.
Negotiating for parole
I contacted Akismet support, and they replied after about a week, informing me that the problems should be fixed. Everything seemed OK for a couple of days, and then all of the problems were back, again. I contacted them again, and this is the answer I received:
“Hi,
This is fixed but we cannot continually undo what bloggers are telling Akismet.”
So apparently, bloggers have been telling Akismet that me and others are spammers? How could this be? I know for a fact that more than 20 bloggers have kindly marked me as “not spam” after I let them know about my troubles with Akismet and that I probably ended up in their spam, and to please mark me as “not spam”.
Tell me, Akismet, what did I do to make you angry? I don’t hate you, but I’m frustrated that you’re making it so difficult for me to leave comments on other sites, and for other bloggers to leave comments on mine.
Rolling a double: breaking out of prison
Mrs. Accountability has published a great post about the topic on her site: “What To Do If You’ve Been Labeled As Spam by Akismet”
Since Akismet has not been giving me an accurate appraisal of who is a spammer and who isn’t, I now run these two plugins:
- Bad Behavior
- SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam
With the combination of these two plugins, I get just about zero spam, and all legitimate bloggers are able to post without worrying about getting ensnared in the spam. I have heard that other blogs have had issues running captchas, but this plugin seems to work well on my site; please let me know if you encounter any issues, though!
UPDATE 21-08-2010:
After sending half a dozen emails and waiting almost two weeks, I finally received an update from Mark:
“This is fixed.
It cannot under any circumstances be fixed again. We will not go against what bloggers tell Akismet.”
Well, thank you for fixing it, again, but you actually have been going against what bloggers have been telling Akismet all of this time. Seeing as how so many fellow non-spammers have also been affected, the problem is clearly with Akismet, not us. These problems should never have happened in the first place.
As you can tell, yes, I am frustrated with Akismet’s idea of “support”.
UPDATE 01-09-2010: This appears to be a more widespread problem than I originally thought: I have recently come across the following posts:
Learning to Blog: Tip a Day 19: Install Akismet
Just Ask Kim: WordPress Plugin Review: Akismet (Anti-Spam)
Growmap: Akismet Deletes Comments Bloggers NEVER SEE!
UPDATE 03-09-2010: My buddy Mich joins me in spam jail: Weekend Edition: On Spam and a Traffic Jam
UPDATE 20-01-2012: I have posted a follow-up here: Problems with Akismet? Try These Great Free Alternatives. If you insist on using Akismet, then I also highly recommend installing and using Conditional Captcha.
So, reader, am I a spammer? Was it only a matter of time before I got caught, and will I be able to roll a double and break out of the spam jail? I am undoubtedly frustrated, and I hope that Akismet is able to fix their algorithms and do a better job in determining spammers from non-spammers in the future.
Add me to your buddy “spammer” list, will you? 🙁 I have become one too. Don’t know what we are doing wrong. I have contacted Akismet, but I don’t think they can help. I have been contacting people personally but I am seeing bigger bloggers actually don’t care unfortunately. So I have stopped commenting in most places 🙁
Welcome, fellow inmate. :S
To be honest, I don’t think Akismet is too concerned with individual bloggers like you and me; at least, that is the impression that I get from them.
I have also been contacting other bloggers whenever it seems that I have been auto-spammed, but you are right, the busier ones often don’t have the time to look through the spam, or they might miss the email. I also get the feeling that I might start annoying them if I have to send the email more than once (sometimes, one “not spam” isn’t enough to do the trick).
Suba, could you try running a test? I believe that Akismet uses the URL as the primary indicator of whether a comment is spam or not, but I’m not certain. Try passing your URL through http://bit.ly or another URL shortening service, or simply leave it off, and then see if your comments will go through. http://bit.ly URLs might come across as a bit shady, though. Being thrown into Akismet limbo really sucks.
Actually I tried without my URL (didn’t think of bit.ly) my comment still went down the drain. So I don’t know if it is the IP (I have tried from 2 different places, once from home and once from a coffee shop) or the url… all I know is they don’t like me…
To rule out IP, you could try posting with a different email address & domain, different name. If you still can’t post, then you could try using Vidalia (Tor) to route your traffic through a different IP…
That’s interesting. In my case, it seemed to be based primarily on the URL.
I don’t think you are a spammer at all! It’s rotten luck/algorithms that make it so good bloggers end up in bad places. I’m glad that you found a solution though 🙂 It’s a little off putting that the support from Akismet wasn’t a little better. I’m glad your out of jail!
Well, not entirely; I still have to deal with everyone else running Akismet 😉
My solution seems to be working, and if I can convince a few others to switch to it, then all the better! Thanks for the support!
I began noticing this problem 3-4 weeks ago. Feel better knowing it’s not just not my blog.
Akismet’s been having real problems, it seems. Hopefully with more public exposure of the problem, they are more motivated to resolve the issue…
Hey thanks for including my post about Akismet. I’m sorry you are having so much trouble, I am sure this is very frustrating for you. Keep us updated on how the new plug-ins are working for you.
I think it also depends on the hosting environment and captcha plugin; I find that this plugin has been more reliable than others! Let me know if you ever find some strange behavior!
Hey guys,
I got caught up in Akismet when I first started off as well. Don’t worry though, as the system learns after the blog owner clicks “approve” several times. I also e-mailed Akismet, and it worked like a charm. Just keepe-mail Akismet, and letting the blog owner approve your comments.
You’ll eventually be free!
Best, Sam
Man, what is it with Akismet and its hate for us financial bloggers?
I hope you’re right Sam, and that eventually we can all be free. In the meantime, it’s about having to bug blog owners whenever I get tossed in the spam and captcha for my own site 😉
I am so dubious as to what motivation another blogger would have to label your comments as spam that I just don’t know if I believe Akismet’s response…good news is that recently, Akismet has NOT been labeling your comments as spam on my site.
I quite frankly don’t believe their response, at all. It’s more likely that Akismet is having issues with their algorithms than that I am getting marked as spam… and any algorithm should be smart enough to know that when someone has been marked as “not spam” 20+ times… they are NOT spam.
That’s encouraging that at least I am no longer being spammed on your site!
Don’t think other bloggers are labeling other blogger commentators as spam either. I think it’s just the system, or else it’s acciental.
Hey Sam,
That’s what incensed me a little about their most recent reply, which I only received after what, a few emails and nearly two weeks?
“This is fixed.
It cannot under any circumstances be fixed again. We will not go
against what bloggers tell Akismet.”
If it’s really fixed, then great, but I can’t believe that kind of response…
Thanks. I have been getting a lot of spam. I added the SI CAPTCHA login to avoid that problem.
Great, let me know if you ever have any issues. You can also use it in conjunction with “Bad Behavior” to cut down on the spammers reaching your site.
I too am in spammer hell, as you know. I contacted Akismet and they implied that I may actually come off as a spammer (yes, I always write comments like “Know I too sometimes purses love and shoes Louis Vitton’) but that the problem should be fixed now. Yeah, right. They probably have a 13 year old kid responding to their emails.
Their responses do seem a little inane at times. Maybe they also have to deal with a lot of real spammers, and they just don’t get that the Yakezie does not belong on that list. 😉
I am spam in my own website!!! But at least it helped me run a few tests without annoying someone else to check. I usually use Suba@WI as my name, my WI email address and website.
From home
(1) Usual Name, Usual email, website — Spam
(2) Usual Name, gmail address, website — NOT Spam
(3) Usual Name, Usual email, no website — Spam
(4) Different Name, Usual email, website – Spam
From office (different IP)
(5) Usual Name, Usual email, website — Spam
(6) Usual Name, gmail address, website — NOT Spam
(7) Usual Name, Usual email, no website — Spam
(8) Different Name, Usual email, website – Spam
So this makes me think it is the email address, which can be solved (atleast until that also starts to go into spam). I see almost all of the legitimate spam is from Yakezie. I am not saying someone is targeting us, but is something about a “pattern” setting things off? I usually visit mostly yakezie blogs and comment, don’t have time to visit a lot more non-yakezie blogs. I suspect a lot of our fellow bloggers do the same…
Hi Suba,
Thanks very much for running that analysis! For those of us caught in spam hell, maybe all we need to do is try using a different email!
As for many of the Yakezie ending up in spam, this is why I have disabled Akismet. Legitimate comments never deserve to be spammed, and Akismet’s had a bad track record of dealing with that lately. Now I never have to check my spam folder, because with the captcha, I don’t get any!
As a fellow prisoner, I tried a test similar to Suba’s. I logged off from my own site and tried leaving a comment…and it worked. So, because I am not spam on my own site, I had no variables to try.
However, on other sites, I have remained blocked when I try to comment with a different email address and my normal URL, making me think that my email is not the culprit.
I have contacted Akismet five times now and have never received any response. For now, I am not being blocked on the sites who have liberated me in the past (mostly from Yakezie), but I am not as confident as Sam that it will all work out.
Hi Joe,
I find it very disheartening that Akismet has not even taken the time to reply to one of your five requests. Don’t they know what a great blog you run, and how far away from spam it is?
A few other things you could try are: Different name, different URL, and a reset of your modem to try and force the IP to update.
Kevin,
Thanks for the empathy and the tips. I will let you know what I try and how it works.
Hi Kevin,
As you know you were sent to my spam folder last week. This is concerning to me because I never knew until you told me. Obviously, you aren’t spamming. I think the issue is comes up because a lot of the programs (Akismet) can’t determine beyond certain variables. So, if you do x, x number of times, you go to the spam category.
For now, I realize I need to check my spam folder and continue to look for other anti-spam programs. If you can, do an update post on this as I think it’s something everyone’s interested in and we need to be aware of. Thanks for bringing this up. I wonder how many real posts I’ve had thrown out that were mislabeled.
Mike
Hey Mike,
I used to use Spam Karma 2 a long time ago, on another blog, and it worked very well. I don’t believe it’s been maintained anymore, which is unfortunate.
For now the captcha + Bad Behavior work well. If the captcha plugin was enhanced so that it only displayed captchas to those without a previously approved comment, that would be even better!
I was in the Akismet spam jail for a while as well. It quickly got resolved after an email but I think they ban email addresses too quickly.
P.S. I don’t think you’re a spammer and neither am I.
Glad to hear you were able to fix things with them. There’s hasn’t been an easy resolution for me; I still have not heard back from their support after sending them a reply!
I just temporarily re-enabled Akismet, and ran a test myself on my own blog:
My URL and Email: Went to spam.
My URL: Went to spam.
My Email: Went to spam.
Neither Email nor URL: Went to pending.
This was all done with my usual IP.
Looks like Akismet has blacklisted both the URL and Email. Do they even look at their false positive reports?
As an Akismet parolee, I feel your pain. They got back to me quickly, but I wonder if any of their paid users are ever sent to the spam seat…
I wonder why they get back to some quickly and why others get completely ignored… maybe you were lucky and had a good technician on support duty at that time!
I did email them and got stopped getting put in spam but that’s gone by the wayside. It’s a pain!
Is there a better spam-catcher plug-in?
Sorry, Kay Lynn, but they did not fix the problem for you. I have Akismet enabled again for testing purposes, and you went into the spam! It’s more likely that the blogs you regularly comment on have marked you as not spam, though of course, it might just be MY Akismet that is being picky.
As a test, try commenting on some blogs you have never commented on before. If your comment disappears without even a “waiting for moderation”, then you know you are still in spam hell!
Hi Kevin,
I know it’s tough but just let the blog owners know. I always have someone check the spam folder everyday because so many comments end up there including casual readers. I learned that the hard way after being tracked down by a reader the first time.
It’s a combination of someone writing word combos that trigger the algorithm or from another blogger marking you as spam. I’m banned completely from one large system and can’t even send emails to the blog owners because when I first started blogging, I asked someone a question in an email and she got mad and defensive over a factual inquiry. She informed me that she didn’t like me and will make sure that she banned me.
I did make the effort to find out the system’s name and moneyning told me what system he used. It was all a waste of effort because it took that company 3 months to respond (I got the email last week) with the standard, you need to work with the blogger.
I just don’t worry about things anymore and do my best to contribute where I can.
By the way, Captcha is hated by casual readers everywhere. I won’t comment on sites with Captcha anymore. I can’t read it most of the time and the audio is even worse. I look at it this way, comments are for the benefit of the blogger, not the reader. It doesn’t take that much work to catch spams and delete.
Hey Kim,
That’s basically what it’s come down to: I have to bug blog owners to approve my comments. Many of the large blogs don’t even have the time to notice these requests, but once I am approved a couple of times, my comments will start going through.
Sorry to hear about your ban. I didn’t get a response quite to that degree from Akismet, but it’s clear that they have no interest in actually fixing the problem.
I’m glad that you decided to comment on my site, in spite of the Captcha. I don’t want to go back to Akismet until they work on fixing these issues, but you’re not the first person to tell me about the annoyance of Captchas. Then again, I know a few fellow bloggers that have captchas and still get tons of comments. I understand your point of view, though, and it’s a tradeoff I have to consider.
Thanks for stopping by!
That happened to me once, but they fixed it promptly and it never happened again. Sorry you’ve had some much trouble!
I have three ideas about why it might be recurring. One is that someone could be using your email address to post spam comments (not actually using your email for anything, but just entering it into the field).
Joe said he tested with different emails and that didn’t help, so perhaps it’s actually your IP address. From what I’ve gathered ISPs recycle IP addresses in bulk, so it’s possible that if your ISP has recently rotated IPs in your area you might be getting assigned IPs that were previously used by spammers and were blacklisted. You could try requesting a new IP from your ISP.
The other is that a few of the people here who have said they get blocked by Akismet are appending @ Website Name to their name or just using their website’s name rather than a person’s name to identify themselves. I’m pretty easy going with spam on my blog, in the sense that if it looks remotely legitimate I won’t mark it as spam. However, it does strike me as impersonal and self promotional when people use names like that. Obviously (by my use of “kristarella”) I don’t expect everyone to use their real name, but a screen name that’s a bit more personal than your blog’s name is preferable (in my opinion) when trying to have a conversation with someone. Perhaps others that feel the same way, but are not so easy going with their comment moderation are marking you guys as spam?
Hi Kristen,
I’m glad that you were able to resolve it quickly! Support has been less helpful in my case. I’ve been able to rule out IP by testing from different networks. They are blocking me based on URL and they are also blocking the email address, too.
Although you are using your own site name ;), you do bring up a good point that it does look a little less spammy to use a nickname instead of the name of one’s site. However, I haven’t been posting on different sites with things like “invest in indexed funds” for my name, and I also know plenty of people who used their real name and still ended up in the spam bucket.
According to Akismet, they do not run a blacklist, so if somebody is marking me as spam, I should only appear as spam on that site. That’s not how it works in practice, however, so that statement is inaccurate. They have “fixed” it a couple of times for me, and afterwards I was only commenting on sites that I knew, but I somehow still ended up back in the spam although every single one of my comments was approved.
I truly do think that they have a flaw in their algorithm, and that their support is not very helpful or accomodating whatsoever. Check out the list of all my fellow bloggers above who have also landed in jail. Some of them are still there. Is it normal for a spam algorithm to have such a high “false positive” rate? Imagine if your gmail behaved like that, and furthermore, started sending you into spam for everyone you ever contacted!
I think the only way to truly fix this is to spread awareness about the problem and increase the visibility of the issue by encouraging people to contact Akismet support whenever they notice these problems, and blog about it if they do not get resolved.
Thanks for stopping by, and by the way, I really like the design of your site. It’s pretty nice!
Ha, yeah. Well, kristarella was my screen name before it was my website name 😉
Gee, it does sound like a black hole of irritation, doesn’t it? You’re right, the blacklist thing is not how it works in practice. And there would be very little value to the plugin if it did work that way, because you can already filter comments into moderation according to their content from the WordPress discussion settings. If there was not some kind of central repository we wouldn’t need the plugin and we wouldn’t need an API key to run the plugin.
I wish there were more non-intrusive anti-spam options. Some people tout Bad Behaviour, but I’ve had lots of irritation being blocked by that on other people’s sites. Captcha makes commenters jump through an extra hoop… there’s just not many options. In the end many people do have to resort to some kind of captcha, but I wish we didn’t have to…
I wish spam didn’t exist in the first place!
Spam Karma 2 worked pretty nicely for me in the past, but it’s no longer being maintained. I am currently using Bad Behavior + a Captcha… I wish I didn’t have to put the captcha, but I won’t be going back to Akismet with its current behavior and I have not seen any other alternatives that I have really liked.
Too bad there has to be so many spammers out there to ruin it for the rest of us. :S Thanks for your detailed comments, I appreciate it!
It looks like this Akismet thingy added me to its spam list. I don’t know why bloggers are using this plugin when Captcha is good enough to block 99% of all spam.
what a headache…
That really blows, Mich. I’ll add you to my jail list as well.
So if Akismet block by URL all we have to do is use a competitors URL, a fake name and start spamming under there name? And get them banned. Does not seem like a very logc system to me. Will akismet track by IP address to see where the spam came from?
Yes, Akismet maybe block your website by your competitor activities, it’s too dangerous.
Ugh, I’m having the same problem and I’m trying to get it fixed but no answer from Askimet.
Same thing has happened to me and I certainly didn’t think I deserved it. Yes, I do use anchor text in my name, if I notice other people on that particular site do as well, but somehow I’ve been blocked anyway. It’s made me sad, like I’ve done something wrong and I’m being punished, even though I enjoy visiting the sites and leaving comments. I’ve always looked down on spammers. To be considered one now has not made my day.
My competitor who stalked me and spammed all the sites I like to post at left brown nosing comments like, “I used to live there and I miss it,” and “I’m a new mom too,”but he’s a man. “I’m learning to sew too!”, or “I’ve been reading your blog for years and I just love it. Consider me a fan!” Well, people seem to buy into it because I’m banned and he isn’t. Doesn’t the irony make you chuckle just a little?
People should stop using Akisment. Its their big fault that it marks valid comment as spam. It gets frustrating for bloggers who are online for hours surfing sites and finding information. Also wordpress is the most widely used platform on internet and all of them seem to be using akismet, that is so wrong. Recaptha works perfect and it has no faults. I hope you are not using akismet and that my comment reaches you.
I too have been experiencing issues with akismet sending my comments to the SPAM bucket. What is funny is that it only seems to happen with I link my blog in the website section of wordpress. If I leave my blog URL out, no problems. I’m not sure why that matters, because I have NEVER spammed my link (and never would! I hate spammy bas****s).
Anyway, I have heard rumors that if you setup multiple wordpress blogs and get multiple API keys and then de-spam yourself on all of them you can get akismet to straighten up. I certainly have no plans to do that because it seems lame and I don’t like to game a broken system. I like to see the system get fixed.
I have had over 30 blogs mark me as not spam, but they don’t care. Their algorithm is broken and their customer service is basically non-existent.
In the meantime, I have found Conditional Captcha to be a really great plugin that helps to correct the flaws in Akismet. I highly recommend installing it and encouraging others to do the same. I should update this post…
My favorite webite/blog is todayhaspower.com It is a refreshing, well-written, ingenious look at…
Just kidding! How exactly is spam defined? Is it based on numbers or content or some combination? Thanks.
I’m jail so you might not even receive this. I don’t see Re-captcha on this form so I guess you’ve switched back to Akismet.
If you have any updates on this issue, I’d love to hear back, but for now, I’m looking at the Bad Behaviour plugin. Unfortunately that wont resolve things for me posting on other peoples’ blogs…
Thanks for the article though,
Paul.
Hi Paul,
I use Conditional Captcha in conjunction with Typepad Antispam actually! The captcha only shows up if you’re flagged as a spammer. You were in my Pending queue, not my Spam queue, so if you didn’t see a captcha you were not flagged. 🙂
The only real update I have is to bug bloggers to let you through and to keep bugging Akismet support, as well as encouraging others to adopt other solutions!
Cool, I’ll check out the options you suggest.
I contacted Akismet and ever since I received the reply back from them I haven’t gone into SPAM. Here’s hoping it continues.
Good luck with it! 🙂
Paul.
Once in a while I guess the support works out. 😉
I, too, am in Akismet purgatory, and am blacklisted from commenting on one of my owne blogs. I don’t think it’s an IP thing; because I can still comment using some of my blogs.
I did test the bit.ly theory; that did not work either. No response from Akismet…
So fare I’ve just asked the blog owners to unspam me and that works, but it’s a bit embarrassing.
I still need to do this today when commenting on new blogs! Hopefully you don’t wind up in purgatory as long as I’ve been in.
All my comments (although i am not a spammer) are cached as spam by akismet. i contact with Akismet support but they just said that Akismet has not a blacklist. But i am sure it has. i tested it by sending same comment using a different url. And it successfully went to comment moderation section. Some people say that the only way is writing comments to your own blogs and mark them as “not spam”. i tried it with my 7 blogs but i could not escape from spam box of other bloggers.
It seems like it doesn’t matter how many blogs approve your comments. Once you’re on their blacklist, that’s it. Hopefully we can encourage more sites to look into alternatives.
Add Conditional Captcha! 🙂