Akismet

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.

History

The founder of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg was inspired to create Akismet so that his mother could blog in safety. In 2005, there were ongoing discussions about how to deal with comment spam. At the time, there were a few plugins around, such as Spam Karma and Bad Behavior, and Matt was also working on his own anti-spam solution. His first attempt was a JavaScript plugin which modified the comment form and hid fields, but within hours of launching it, spammers downloaded it, figured out how it worked, and bypassed it. This is a common pitfall for anti-spam plugins: once they get traction, spammers pay attention and they quickly figure out how to bypass it. In late 2005 Matt launched the Akismet plugin for WordPress. Akismet (which stands for Automattic kismet) is a way of dealing with spam in aggregate, a crowd-sourced spam-fighting tool.