UPDATE: the new GASP Anti-Spam WordPress plugin has been released and is available in the WordPress Plugin Repository.
THIS is the ALTERNATIVE TO AKISMET that provides the SOLUTION to being Flagged as a Spammer! Spread it throughout the blogosphere and your comments will work again.
Are YOUR Comments Banned by Akismet? Image credit Hurricane Softwares
URGENT: Please DO NOT leave comments in unrelated blog posts in this and especially in OTHER blogs about the Akismet issue.
Leaving comments in the blogs of those who have commented that they flag non-spam as spam solves nothing and brings you down to their level.
If you wish to respond to them please do it IN THIS POST or on your own blog.
If you identify yourself in your comments it reflects badly on you and there is a very real possibility that they will flag you as a spammer!
Leaving comments in their blogs using fake information is a waste of your time. It will only make them feel they are correct in what they are doing and they will simply delete the posts.
If they do not understand now nothing more we can say or do is likely to make any difference at all.
NEW: I have created two test pages anyone can use to test their names and URLs. See Akismet Test Pages.
UPDATE: June 7 Akismet has removed the ability to use the test page mentioned in this post to determine if your comments are being sent to either SPAM or being deleted outright by Akismet.
MESSAGE TO AKISMET: How does removing our ability to find out if our names or URLs are blocked by your plugin improve this situation? That makes this worse – not better – and makes you look guilty. You should be willing to TELL US that your plugin does indeed delete comments. If that is how you believe it SHOULD work honesty is the best policy.
If you love commenting in blogs you are in for a shock. Did you know that Akismet is censoring comments?
Yes, there are still plenty of really spammy comments showing up in our spam folder so it LOOKS like we get to moderate them.
When I have tested in the past because Dr. Ann Voisin of Linda Cristas College I always found comments from their students about Toys Period in my SPAM folder and was able to rescue them.
I owe Dr. Ann and her students an apology. They were correct.
Akismet IS censoring their comments
And mine – and probably yours too!
Yesterday and today I saw with my own eyes that comments I wrote and left in blogs I moderate were simply vanishing into thin air. I waited 48 hours just to make sure they weren’t just delayed. They were not.
My very real comments went straight into the bit bucket!
In Are You Banned By Akismet For Spamming? Ashish wrote:
Akismet system relies heavily upon blog owners marking your comments/trackbacks as spam and reporting them back to Akismet as such via the WordPress plugin. This means that many innocent bloggers are “false positives” in the Akismet system due to either malicious or ignorant behavior on the part of other bloggers.
What we need to realize is that many bloggers have a VERY BROAD definition of spam and if they report you as a spammer you could be banned even if you have never left a spam comment in your life and don’t even know what a keyword is!
Here are some unusual definitions of spam that I have come across:
- Any comment that has a business in the URL field.
- Any comment left by anyone the blogger doesn’t recognize.
- Comments that include a link not related to their blog’s niche.
- Any comment that has keywords in the name field EVEN IN BLOGS THAT HAVE KEYWORDLUV installed.
- Any comment they don’t like.
- Any comment from a commentator they don’t like.
- Any trackback = spam to some bloggers because so many of them are from scraped or MFA (made for AdSense sites) – even high quality incoming links from major sites and blogs!
I hope any blogger reading this will reconsider what they are labeling spam. These all fit my definition of spam which I hope you’ll adopt. These really ARE SPAM:
- Comments that have nothing to do with your post including generic “one size fits all” comments.
- Comments that are lists of words or links to junk sites of any kind.
- Objectionable or profane comments and comments that link to adult or illegal sites.
- Any comment that is an advertisement for a business or another site even if it IS related to your blog.
- Copied text or comment spam.
- Comments that are obviously intended only as a way to slide in a link and mention of another site.
- Ridiculous suggestions to “keep posting”, requests for help subscribing, over-the-top flattery, insults (do they really think THAT would work?), “I just found you in a search engine” and short comments that add nothing to the conversation like “great post” or +1 or me too.
I want to encourage bloggers and especially CommentLuv bloggers to welcome QUALITY comments from business owners, entrepreneurs and bloggers. Please read my tips in that post on best practices for both bloggers and commentators.
UPDATE: Akismet has removed the ability to use that page to test to see if your comments are being sent to either SPAM or being deleted outright by Akismet.
I discussed this issue today Andy Bailey from CommentLuv and he sent me this:
Akismet Test link. By submitting a comment there you can determine whether it is being automatically deleted by Akismet or not.
This is NOT as simple as most might think. You might be ok when you enter your name one way but not another. Your comments might go through if you enter your URL some ways and not others. If you ever comment in KeywordLuv blogs any comment with @ one keyword might work while another with @ something else won’t.
Even if you test every combination you ever use in the name and URL fields Akismet might cause your comment to disappear based on any word in the comment itself.
Unless you test every comment you ever leave you will never really know if the blogger ever sees it until it appears live (or likely doesn’t)!
The bottom line for me is that this is totally unacceptable. I would rather have to pre-moderate every comment than have real commentators censored in a way that I never even see their comments.
Unless we start Tweeting to each other every time we leave a comment or send an email or use the contact form to ensure the blogger knows to look for our comments, an ever increasing number of comments will simply vanish.
We have these choices:
- Ask Akismet to clarify precisely how their plugin works and consider modifying this behavior.
- If Akismet will not change how their plugin works for everyone, at least let us opt out of this behavior so that we see every comment to moderate it.
- I was going to say that if they will not let us opt out they should at least NOTIFY US every time any information we use when commenting is banned but I can already predict they would not be willing to do that because then real spammers will simply change what they use.
- Find an alternative spam management plugin.
- Disable Akismet and switch to pre-moderating comments BEFORE they appear. If we just disable it our blogs will be flooded with objectionable real spam and we can not have that.
I call on all bloggers to make your feelings about this known to Akismet. You can try tweeting to them but they are not highly interactive on Twitter. A better way would be to use their contact form. Be specific about what you would like them to do.
If you know of an alternative plugin please let me know.
I am already not a big fan of WP-SpamFree because they block many words automatically including business and marketing and in many blogs if you trigger their spam filter you lose your comment. (In others you don’t and I do not know why. Perhaps someone will share that with us.)
If I do not hear back from Akismet and do not find an alternative I will disable Akismet and set this and all my blogs to pre-moderate all comments.
I hate to do that for two reasons:
- It makes it more difficult for commentators to use my Comment Share strategy. In blogs where comments are moderated I recommend saving the links where you leave comments and coming back later to see if they are visible. I use Tomboy Notes for that but others use spreadsheets.
- I dread finding out how many more comments are disappearing into the Akismet ether. I already review 150+ spam comments daily and rescue several real comments each time I check them.
Have any other recommendations? Please leave a comment. Not sure this applies to you? I urge you to go check to see if you are banned by Akismet. Do other bloggers a favor and leave a comment in this post either way so we can get an idea how many are being affected.
Here are the two comments I have left in the Akismet test blog post in case anyone reading this would like more details:
I have proven to my satisfaction that Akismet is deleting valid comments we as bloggers never see. If you get taken to a blank white page when you comment that comment probably got deleted.
If you sometimes use your full name and other times your first name one can be blocked and not the other. The same is true if you use your first name and your blog name as I often do. In non-KeywordLuv blogs I often put Gail from GrowMap so the blogger will recognize me as I am best known across the Internet as GrowMap but many prefer a first name.
If you comment in KeywordLuv enabled blogs you might have name @ keywords so you might be blocked using some keywords but not others. It is also possible that even if you come here and verify that the name, email and website you intend to use when commenting is ok but some word in your comment causes it to be blocked.
Akismet might treat http://YourDomain.com differently than http://www.YourDomain.com differently than http://YourDomain.com/ and individual PAGES on your site that you have left in the Website field might be blocked.
If you are going to be commenting you almost have to come here and test your entire comment first if you really want it to show up OR you could leave the comment and if it doesn’t show up immediately THEN come here and test.
I am not willing to let Akismet delete comments I never see. That is dangerous and censorship and it just won’t do. Why can obvious spam end up in my spam section but not all the real comments? Why are THEY singled out?
Either Akismet needs to change this or at least let us opt out of it OR we need an alternative that does not censor our commentators OR we will have to go to pre-moderation and moderate every comment.
Testing to see if GrowMap @ Support Small Businesses is blocked. It is. Then I tested to see if having that post in the Website was blocked. It is. Now I’m testing just using Gail and my home page works and have the link in the body of the comment. That doesn’t work either.
Any comment that includes a link to the post on my site about the importance of supporting small businesses is automatically censored by the Akismet plugin.
In case anyone wonders why I want bloggers to support small businesses it is because they are the solution to the economic crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere.Bloggers can choose to be a big part of the solution or they can delete (or let Akismet censor) quality comments from small local and online businesses and let our economies collapse because we are too blind to see where we are headed. You can find a link to that post on my best-of-growmap page and in the comment replies on most posts.
If you want to see what the Akismet test page looked like it is currently still in cache in the search engine and I will add before and after screen captures below:
Screen capture of what was on the page when I wrote this post:
What was at that URL when I tested and wrote this post – click to see Cache version while it works
Date and Time of Cache Version shown in the screen capture above
Screen capture of my comment live on that past when I wrote this post: (Only what would fit on one screen is shown below. The full comment is shown above.)
Cache version screen capture of my Comment Live on the Akismet test page
Screen capture of what is on that page since this post was published (click image to go there):
After this post went live the ability to test to see what Akismet blocks was removed; click image to go to that page now.
I can now see part of the two comments I left last night in Cache showing “Your comment is awaiting moderation“. Only one of them appears in the cache version for some reason.
Here is what I see when I go to that page now:
Comments that were live on that site last night are now “awaiting moderation”.
AKISMET COMPLAINTS:
- NEW: Akismet Huge CrowdSourcing Fail – What Akismet is doing now is what Google search is planning to do later! CHANGE SEARCH ENGINES NOW- and encourage everyone you know and your readers and followers to do the same!
AKISMET ALTERNATIVE:
- See our complete anti-spam process
{ 384 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
akismet i think can block legit comments, i mean whats wrong with sending out 100 comments a day (real comments that the author would love to keep).
Its totally unfair the time restriction and relating it to being a spammer.
I have been blacklisted by Akismet after discovering through my own work that the majority of my comments have never appeared on blogs that I have happily and freely commented on for months. The only ones actually accepting my posts are those with Commentluv.
I emailed Akismet about the issue. I explained my anchor text usage, my link and how I leave comments, thoughtful, engaging and debate style. They emailed me back the next day, holding up their ruling declaring me spam.
However they said there is no black list and that it is up to each individual blogger to make that decision. I call b/s because I am emailing many of these bloggers who I am socially friends with in my field and they don’t even see my comments in their spam folder, just the usual junk.
I hate to say it but a company like Akismet has far too much power and something so stupid as this is actually going to kill my blog if I don’t work exceptionally harder. It also wrongly categorizes my content as spam, which my readers would gladly stand up against! I am sure that it has killed many legitimate blogs.
Scott would love you to read ..Manchester United IPO – A Legal Own Goal?
Twitter: GrowMap
October 18, 2012 at 11:36 am
Hello Scott,
I’d say you have a clear picture of the situation. What they claim IS b.s. because the individual bloggers do not have the expertise to know that Akismet is throwing your comments in among masses of spambot crap – and even if they did know they have to mark you as “not spam” so many more times that I have not seen that actually work.
My knowledge of what Akismet is doing lately is none because when I saw what they were doing we deleted it from every blog and use the GASP antispambot plugin named after this blog instead.
That plugin is why your comments appear on CommentLuv blogs – because those bloggers either have it built into CommentLuv Premium or they installed the free GASP plugin. Anywhere you see the checkbox asking if you’re human (or something similar – the wording can be easily edited) that plugin is installed. Even if they also use Akismet (some do) at least they are more likely to see your comments because they aren’t flooded with the spambot crap no blogger will spend time picking through.
I was up to 1000+ spam comments a day until I installed the GrowMap antispambot plugin and it blocked ~96% of them! It was taking hours to moderate comments here and most just won’t do it.
If they have a particular box checked in the Akismet Configuration and a post is more than 30 days old the comment simply vanishes and they can’t even rescue it if they ARE moderating all that spambot crap.
Akismet lies about what they’re doing and is not going to admit they are part of the larger goal of silencing bloggers with alternative viewpoints and preventing businesses and blogs from using comments to grow.
GrowMap would love you to read ..Bullying Prevention: Taking a Stand Against Bullying
Thanks Growmap,
These are essential skills to know. It’s unbelievable how many hours I wasted trying to engage in discussion and occasionally build backlinks was worth absolutely nothing and no fault to the blogger or myself.
I will look for the click here to prove you are not a spammer. IMO, the stuff the Akismet is supposed to catch and which it has done an alright with my blogs has been those automated software spams. They are generic, awful English and contain no relevance to my blogs at all, ever. So far that software cannot do such an easy task as click. Very few bloggers hire people to write the comments for them, which requires the clicking. At that point it is pretty obvious to see who is just trying to manipulate SEO.
I would much rather have total control over my content and my intellectual property, than not even seeing what is going on. This is very misleading and dangerous.
It is incredibly misleading and problematic to also have the 30 day feature enabled without anyone’s knowledge… Why should comments close after 30 days? What value does that have to a blogger? Most blogs I find through Google search (including this one) and many of them require often several weeks before they are listed near the top of the SERPs and someone will find them. Sometimes it takes months and even years. However if they have written something interesting, controversial or that has changed since that time wouldn’t it be nice to discuss that topic?
I have immediately disabled and deleted Akismet and am suspending commenting allowances. I will definitely check out your plugin. How has the reaction been with your plugin? How well is it spreading?
Scott would love you to read ..Is Too Much of One Great Stock a Bad Thing?
Twitter: GrowMap
October 22, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Hi Scott,
While Akismet does block SOME spambot comments it lets a ton of them through. The longer your blog is online and the more popular it gets the more you’ll see. I was up to 1000+ comments a day and when I first installed the GASP plugin that dropped to only around 40.
It is NOT only people who write poor English that use bots. It is also some extremely well written spam that is hard to detect without searching online to see if they are duplicates. GASP blocks those and Akismet lets many of them through – wasting the blogger’s time checking them out.
Akismet deleting comments on posts over 30 days old is a separate issue from comments being closed after x days. They are both settings the blogger can adjust, but one is in WordPress and the other is in Akismet. If bloggers do not want Akismet deleting comments they never see, they need to check the settings in their Akismet configuration.
Some bloggers do close comments after 14 or 30 days or any other number they choose because they don’t want to end up with hundreds or even thousands of comments on one post. Some of those bloggers believe that everyone reads what they publish right away and see blogs more like newspapers or magazines than I do.
I leave my comments open because many of my posts are “evergreen” in that I keep them updated and choose to write about topics that are still relevant for many years. I do not believe that I have a captive audience that immediately reads every word I write. I believe that I write strong how-to and reference material that people look for when they need it. I want them to be able to ask questions or make comments so I leave mine open indefinitely.
You can see the statistics on any plugin that is listed in the official WordPress plugin repository. As of now, the GrowMap anti-spambot plugin shows 49,449 downloads and that would not include all the blogs like this one that use CommentLuv Premium with GASP built into it.
Looks like I have been a victim of Askimet too. I tried using a different email address from the same domain – I created a new account at gravatar and uploaded a picture for the new email address as well. Still blocked.
I wonder if my whole domain has been blocked? If so, I wonder why, I don’t understand why they would block me. I have provided decent comments. – at least I think so…
david would love you to read ..Gum Disease Solution
Twitter: GrowMap
September 7, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Hi David,
There is no consensus among bloggers on what spam is and many will immediately click spam because your site sells something. Some bloggers will even click spam on any comment left by someone they don’t already know! There really isn’t much you can do about that as even if you appeal to Akismet and they are willing to unblock you it won’t be long before you’re blocked again.
You could focus on CommentLuv blogs because they tend to be more likely to use the GrowMap antispambot plugin (GASP) instead of Akismet. Some of them will use Akismet too, but they are more likely to see and approve your comments because GASP blocks the spambots and leaves on average less than 10% as many spam comments to moderate.
Well thank god not eveyone is deleting comments, althought im a little late to the party. Does keyword love really work? im not convinced,
lee would love you to read ..Foot Reflexology Points – Foot Reflexology Chart, Detox Pads Acupressure Detox Patches
Twitter: GrowMap
August 31, 2012 at 7:05 pm
Hi Lee,
Work in what way? It links the name field to only the keyword phrase you want. I’ll edit your comment so you can see how it works. When you comment put Lee @ your keyword phrase in the name field and only the keywords will be linked.
That can be nofollow or dofollow depending on how the blog owner configures that field. Whether links in comments are beneficial or may become bad for SEO remains to be seen post-Penguin update.
Hi, we should have an personal blog for everyone. So that we can share our own thoughts. You did good. Happy blogging.
Bsheikh Blog would love you to read ..Compare Boat Parts When Shopping Online
I have emailed them 3 times and asked to be “reinstated”. The first response they denied that they have the power to blacklist and they have ignored the last two. Pretty much rendered me inactive on the blogs in my market.
Anyone has any tips on getting them to change their mind, I’d really appreciate it!
Cheryl
Twitter: astorckenfeldt
April 27, 2012 at 3:11 am
Well. If someone comments on my blog i want too se it, at least in the admin-panel before it’s removed!
I dont trust scripts like askimet to do such a great job that no human needs to see it.
I don´t see any reason why askimet is installed (inactive) in a default wordpress installation! I really don´t like that circumstance so i googled for the reason of it and found your site.
Does anyone know why askimet is installed in a GPL Wordpress when it is not for free at all?
Regards
Twitter: GrowMap
March 9, 2012 at 12:39 pm
Hi Rene,
Akismet is pre-installed because Automattic (the people who control WordPress) created it and want to use it to censor bloggers like me who teach how to get out of the game that is destroying our economy (U.S. and worldwide) – which is why there are Occupy protests.
George Carlin explains so well about the game being “fixed” in his stand-up on The American Dream. (Warning: that video contains a lot of profanity and explicit adult content – but it is so compelling I break my usual “rules” and share it anyway.)
growmap would love you to read ..Small Business Brand Advocates Drive Free WOMM Word of Mouth ~ Benefits of B2I2C Marketing
I myself always uninstall it as soon as I’ve installed wordpress. But I guess after finding out why, I would rather start using it! Looks kind of nice!
Alf would love you to read ..När du letar efter rabattkoder på nätet
Twitter: GrowMap
March 14, 2012 at 3:54 pm
WHAT? Did you read any of the posts on this blog about Akismet? See the information about the GrowMap anti-spambot plugin and why we don’t use Akismet. Akismet censored our best comments, blacklists the best commenters, and if a particular box is checked actually DELETES comments before a blogger ever even sees them!
Akismet is great with handling bad requests for your comment sections, and I haven’t use any other plugins yet, but I guess I’ll stick with Akismet or what do you say?
Twitter: GrowMap
March 9, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Hi Rick,
I will never use Akismet in ANY blog because it censors your best comments. While some bloggers who ONLY care about keeping out spam and don’t care about their readers or commenters use Akismet, we recommend strongly against it. We use the GrowMap anti-spambot plugin mentioned in this post.
growmap would love you to read ..Fearless Women on the Internet Plus Exceptional Bloggers and Twitter Influencers for #FollowFriday
I don’t see why you would use Akismet when there are so many other great plugins out there for dealing with spam…I mean, only the activation procedure for Akismet is kinda bureaucratic. Isn’t it?
Daniel would love you to read ..Bröllopsklänningar
Twitter: denta_se
December 25, 2011 at 4:44 pm
’m with you on that one. Akismet improving their system… I don’t think so! I’m not counting on it, but I’m definitely wishing for it… As for their behavior when it comes to removing the abilities for checking whether you’ve been banned or not — that’s sooo big corporation-ish.
I don’t know what to do now, I love blog commenting however I also like to put my homepage in the website field to promote my site, but I don’t spam other people’s sites, I put thoughtful comments in them, akismet really is not accurate
Simon would love you to read ..Curtains for sliding glass doors
I think we are guilty of knee jerk here; jumping to unwarranted conclusions. In my blog I moderate comments and no I don’t approve every comment. I delete a lot of stuff but automated systems just aren’t sophisticated enough to do this fairly and are effectively gagging genuine opinion. It’s a form of auto censorship.
I think people need to study askimet rules before complaining !
Twitter: JymTarrant
June 12, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Hi Gail,
Interesting to note how serious the implications of this issue are. I deleted Akismet some time ago for the reasons noted above, in favor of your wonderful GASP/Simple Trackback Validation combo.
All fine until recently more and more spam is being manually submitted – So I’ve re-installed Akismet. My take on it is that I’d rather check my spam folder for the odd genuine comment, then be continuously deleting hand-spam from my blog.
I’ll have to make sure Akismet isn’t deleting anything before I see it though, since it reliably catches genuine commentators now and again.
Hope my comments aren’t getting stuck anywhere…!
Thanks for enlightening us,
Jym
Jym would love you to read ..Prevent WordPress Spam Comments Effortlessly
Twitter: vgv8
June 13, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Good point because this Gail’s blog also dump my comment by Akismet from whatever Email I try to write. I ‘m writing from grey IP-address which, I believe, is blacklisted
So, Gail also reactivated Akismet I believe soon after writing anti-Akismet articles.
Well, the point is that CAPTCHA alone, even stopping bots or whichever good, will not stop spam. As soon as blog is popular it will attract manual spammers
Also protection is ongoing activity, you cannot install some good solution hoping to solve the spam issues once and forever.
Though, I would prefer to pass CAPTCHAs (including questions) then guessing – have I burned my time in vain writing a comment and will it be seen by a blog owner
Twitter: GrowMap
June 13, 2011 at 8:33 pm
No, I absolutely did NOT activate Akismet on any blog I control and especially not this one. Akismet has been deleted from every blog I manage and I just verified that is it NOT in this blog.
You need to understand how commenting works in WordPress. WordPress even without Akismet installed can put your comments into spam. The blogger can put your information into the blacklist function in their individual blogs or can use the function that only allows comments to go live immediately IF you already have a comment approved using THAT EXACT wording in the name field.
Your comment above was NOT in spam but it was held for moderation probably because you haven’t used that combination of name and keywords before when commenting here.
We all need to be careful about jumping to unwarranted conclusions. I DO moderate comments and I do NOT approve every comment. I delete tons of manually left spam comments and even so I approve more than I should.
One of these days I need to make time to start deleting a lot of them but it is not all that easy to decide which to keep and which to delete because many new bloggers leave very weak comments and many spammers leave fairly good comments.
If we held a spam judging contest I can bet there will be no consensus on what comments are “real” versus which ones are “spam” because there isn’t really any such thing. Someone live who could have read or at least skimmed each post wrote them both.
What’s a “grey” IP address?
growmap would love you to read ..Support Small Businesses
Twitter: GrowMap
June 13, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Hi Jym,
As long as you check for real comments – and that is a LOT easier when GASP is blocking all the spambots – you should be fine. Do make sure you don’t have Akismet configured to delete comments automatically in posts older than 30 days. See my Akismet Configuration post for details.
growmap would love you to read ..Small Business Internet Marketing
I`m banned by askimet too…i think…what can i do ?
i`ve send them an email..but still no answer..
Akismet allows for legit people to un-blacklist themselves. Contact them at the support pages and see if it works.
Twitter: tmcomics
May 13, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I had a wrong view of Spam & since reading a number of your posts I have changed that viiew & will now allow business sites as url’s as long as the comment is relevent. Comments such as “Great post” or “This is just the information I was looking for” will get deleted. If the valis commenter leaves just a business name without their real name @ business name also I will ad their name if I can determine it or use anonymous @ business name if I can’t.
I haven’t updated my comment policy yet which still reflects my old anti-business sentiment.
Thanks for helping me to see that people running internet businesses need support too
Tony McGurk would love you to read ..WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – Red
Twitter: tmcomics
May 13, 2011 at 6:26 pm
P.S. I have Keywordluv installed & it only displays “yourname@your keyword” not “yourname from your keyword ” like yours does. I have deactivated, reactivated, uninstalled, reinstalled but it still isn’t working properly. I have the latest version. Any ideas Gail???
Tony McGurk would love you to read ..WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – Red
Twitter: GrowMap
May 15, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Hi Tony,
Derek probably customized my CSS and honestly that is not really a great idea because intelligent people will often put name from their keywords instead of name @ their keywords.
When they do that I have to edit the name field for them or the entire thing gets linked. Unless you just want to see who is smart enough to try to notice my blog says name FROM keywords I don’t really recommend it.
I’ve been meaning to ask Derek to either change that or add more prominent instructions on how to use KeywordLuv or maybe a link to my How to Use KeywordLuv post.
Have you considered using Twitter? It is a HUGE benefit because it makes it fast and easy to connect with people who can be sometimes be hard to reach (like me). When someone’s Twitter username is in their comment I often tweet to them when I reply and that gives them exposure on Twitter and potential clicks through to their site.
If you want to get started on Twitter I have everything you need linked from my Twitter Best Practices post.
growmap would love you to read ..Must Have- Small Business Web Online Profiles
Just found out that I’m banned from akismet too. Going to do what I can – have contacted them, but don’t expect a reply. Will post an update if I manage to get unbanned.
Twitter: GrowMap
May 15, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Hi Sam,
You’re in good company. Akismet DOES sometimes unban bloggers, but they usually end up banned again if they comment very much at all. What we do is make sure the blogs we like to read and comment in most know about our GrowMap anti-spambot plugin (G.A.S.P.) alternative to Akismet.
Any blog you see that has a check box to confirm you are real, or human or not a spammer is using our plugin – and 99% of them will have deleted Akismet altogether and those that still use it can see your comment more easily (because it blocks all the spambots and that is most of the spam) so even then you’re more likely to get your comment to appear.
As of today, the official WordPress plugin stats show 7,523 downloads of G.A.S.P.
growmap would love you to read ..Small Business Internet Marketing Starter Package
There is also GRAVATAR.com from the same company Automattic that provides Akismet
If you search for (gravatar privacy concern) keywords you would find a lot of interesting things. For ex., comment to
http://techthinker.com/gravatar-privacy-concern/
tells:
” I am far more concerned that Gravatar-enabled blogs send my e-mail address to Gravatar whenever I comment (even if I am not a registered Gravatar user). Gravatar can then track my internet usage associated with that e-mail address across multiple sites”
And the ToS of Gravatar is written in such evasive way, that do not impede to sell collected Emails. Then, we wonder where spammers get our Emails
Also, see
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/44717/is-gravatar-a-privacy-risk
Another, scam scheme is to collect Email through free funny captchas.
Once plugin with this captcha is installed, it collects and sends all emails from “protected” comments, registration forms, forum posts, etc.
There are some posts warning about it but in vain, for example, post by Nino in:
http://joomlaforum.ru/index.php/topic,138180.msg882437.html#msg882437
but the warning about such collecting of Emails by keycaptcha.com antispam service are lost amogst ocean of positive viral publicity through social networks and forums posts
Twitter: keycaptcha
May 27, 2011 at 1:09 am
KeyCAPTCHA does not collect visitors’ private information.
The author of the groundless accusations is a technically illiterate person.
Everyone can be convinced of his illiteracy by using FireBug or any other tools which show all outgoing traffic from a browser. KeyCAPTCHA sends just data which are required for CAPTCHA validation process. And it will never be changed.
By now our service doesn’t have any financial problems. That is why we are changing the TOS of our paid service “Personolized CAPTCHA” without rush. We are going to launch our “Personolized CAPTCHA” in June.
And we won’t close our free standard KeyCAPTCHA service.
Looks like that these groundless accusations are planned competitors’ action against KeyCAPTCHA because these groundless accusations have been submitted to a few other websites. They used just two nicknames and conducted their action in one day.
If you find groundless accusations like these please contact us via KeyCAPTCHA website.
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