After nearly three weeks of receiving zero spam comments in my Spam folder, this morning I received two:
Unfortunately, one, from Jim Everett Table Toss, was a legitimate comment. The other, from NoseyPepper, was not. It was actual spam. So Akismet got 50% right.
A week ago, I wrote a post wondering why my blog, which typically gets maybe a dozen or two comments in my Spam folder each day, was not receiving any spam comments at all. I posed the question to the Happiness Engineers and this is what I was told…
Having no spam in your comments section is indeed a good sign. It suggests that the Akismet anti-spam feature on your WordPress.com blog is working efficiently. Akismet is designed to filter out spam, so it’s doing its job if you’re not seeing any.
The lack of spam comments for a day just means that there weren’t any spam messages that attempted to get through, or if there were, Akismet successfully blocked them.
Rest assured, I have skimmed through the approved comments and didn’t find any potential spam. Therefore, it looks like everything is running smoothly.
No, no, no! “I’m not going to rest assured,” I wrote back. “Up until about a week ago, I would typically receive a dozen or more spam comments and one or two trash comments a day. That gave me some assurances that Akismet was doing its job. Then all of a sudden, starting more than a week ago, zero spam comments, zero trash comments. Something has changed!”
At one point last year I started getting hundreds of spam comments a day in my Spam folder. One of my fellow bloggers suggested that I set my comments to “Automatically close comments on posts older than 30 days.”
After changing that setting, the comments in my Spam folder immediately dropped from hundreds to a dozen or two a day. Until a few weeks ago that was pretty consistent, with several legitimate comments I had to pull out and manually approve each week.
Later this morning I removed that restriction, figuring that if any post I published on the blog over the past six-plus years could be commented upon, my Spam folder would fill up. But no. Other than the two that I mentioned at the top of this post, there have been no new spam comments.
Meanwhile, I’ve sent some follow-up messages to the Happiness Engineers, but they seem to be ignoring me!
This, That, and the Other 
I’m still getting almost no spam on WP. Even my gmail has many fewer spam comments — but never none at all. But I get a huge amount of email, so that might account for the difference.
I think it’s not just WP. I think there are other changes happening, especially for the iPhone. Remember that emergency update we got (I think) last week? iPhones closed a hole in the software. I think Microsoft has done the same thing. Something has changed but I don’t think it’s just one company this time.
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Who knows? Every time an app or an OS has an update, I hope that everything still functions after the upgrade.
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It is simple. That fact that you are outing them has caused them to block you. You’ve won. Enjoy it.
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Ha! So simple! 😉
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I’ve gone from a thousand a day to two a day…and thankful for it! Count your blessings, Fandango..But, now ya gotta find a different schtick!!!
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Okay, no more complaints about spam comments.
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Forgottenman tells me there were days when I had 2,000 spams!!! Can’t believe it. I’m down to 0 to 2 a day now. He had administrative access to my blog since he helped me set it up and he has assumed the task of keeping me spam-free. How’s that for a friend? He goes in every day or two, I guess, and clears them all out.
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I got two more spam comments in my Spam folder overnight. One was spam, one was legit.
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I think we need to find you a new schtick now that your spam has dried up. Does anyone have a good idea? How about “backhanded compliments?” My sister had one at her 50th class reunion. A woman came up to her and said, “You’re prettier than you used to be!”
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Ooh, that could be fun. How about this one: “I really admire how you don’t worry about looking perfect all the time.”
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Ha!!! I remember one from my past, not directed at me but don’t remember where I heard it: “You sweat less than any little fat girl I know!”
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😂
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Why do you want spam messages?
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I don’t want them, but I just wonder what happened to them, since I’d get a number of them daily. And I would review them to check for legit comments that got swept up by Akismet with actual spam comments. Now that no spam comments appear in my Spam folder, how will i be able to weed out legit comments from spam comments. Plus, it bothers me when there is dramatic change to something with no prior announcement and with no explanation.
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I see! I do get a few spam comments every day but most are trying to sell me things or to get me to follow them.
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You are correct to suspect something is off. During this time, I have been unable to post, then thought I could only post once per day, then found that wasn’t what the deal is. Hopefully, I will be se to get this through.
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Did you reply back to Jim Everett Table Toss?
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No.
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I was thinking that if you would have that he might send you more spam.
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You think his was spam, too?
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Good times could be said by anyone, but I am not sure if it was it relevant to what you said in your post.
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It was in response to my Friday Fictioneers post yesterday about a comics book and candy store I used to go to as a kid, so I thought “good times” could have been relevant.
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I agree, Fandango, that is rather odd, that there is so little spam, but, on the other hand, I am glad you removed the comment restriction, as I have plenty of your older posts that I want to comment to but havent gotten to them yet!
And now I shall go see how many spam comments I have, as I havent checked in a while!
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From last weekend to today… no spam. Something changed and I don’t think the spammers went away that easily. I am not going to complain about it though.
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