Stop, Don’t hit that Delete Spam Button

These days Akismet’s accuracy have drastically reduced and its not as effective as it was couple of months ago. Akismet was designed to learn from its previous mistakes and keep improving itself, but unfortunately its taking too long to learn.

Worst of all, Akismet doesn’t even notify the commentor that his comment has been marked as spam, so its pretty hard to make out if your comment is marked as spam or kept under moderation. I and some of my friends are facing the same problem, So check your spambox before hitting that delete button.

 

What can you do to prevent spam?

  • Use alternative Spam Filters like Spam Karma (SK2)
  • Use Bad Behavior (Thou it doesn’t stop spam, it reduces the rate of spam)
  • Use Captcha or Anti Spam Image

 

Why SK2 is better than Akismet?

SK2 is considered better than Akismet mainly because SK2 doesn’t have a universal blacklist and once if a comment is accidentally marked as spam, demarking it will put the commentor’s IP address in a whitelist, so that it won’t be caught as spam again.

Although Akismet has selflessly served in blocking 19786 spams on TechBuzz, I don’t think its good enough any more, so I’m switching over to Spam Karma 2. I’ve been also considering using Captcha to prevent spam, but TechZ suggested me that, it may hurt my commentators, so I have dropped that idea temporarily.

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This post was published by on October 30, 2006

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.stevenbao.com/ Steven Bao

    Great suggestions – I myself was dissatisfied with Akismet, so I downloaded myself a copy of Spam Karma 2 this morning. Also, Capacha works sometimes but hurts your reputation a bit.

    Thank you for this post!

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    Yes Steven, . I think the combination of Bad Behavior and SK2 works very efficiently, but BB isn’t compatible with WP-Cache :(

  • http://blog.adglobe.net km

    I have use Spam karma 2 for long time… I quite satisfied with this services.

  • http://www.nyssajbrown.net/blog/ Nyssa

    I definitely know the feeling with Akismet as it kept catching your comments. It seems okay now, but it’s catching TechZ’s now. Can’t escape it ;)

    I’ll be switching over to SK2, as well, sometime. :)

  • http://sindhu.manicproject.co.uk sindhu

    yeah heres another disatisfied user of akismet: SYN

    2 of my previous comments eaten up akismet bleh

    i myself use spam karma 2 and its the best. god bless dr. dave! *:D*

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    Nyssa: I used a proxy to leave comments on your blog, else it would have been caught again.

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    Sindhu: Sorry, I couldn’t save your previous comments. I get around 900 Spams a day and I can’t go through each one of them.

  • http://ajaydsouza.com/ Ajay D’Souza

    I’ve always used SK2 and BB on my blog.

    Never bothered much with Akismet, though I do use it as a plugin for SK2.

    You may want to take a look at my article here.

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    SK2 + Akismet + Bad Behaviour !!

    That’s simply Insane

  • http://nithinkamath.info/ Nithin

    I initially used to use SK2, but since the past two months have been using Akismet, I have not experienced any problems with it as such, but I like both SK + Akismet, so I think i will have to take a look at Ajay’s guide.

  • http://www.techzonline.net TechZ

    Day 1: Disabled Akisment, Installed SK2+BB2

    Never looked back.

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    TecHZ: SK2 doesn’t work on my end, I’m forced to use Akismet.

    Your Comment was caught in my Spambox, Good thing, I verified it once.

  • http://successcreeations.com/ Chris Cree

    I’ve never used anything but Askimet and have been quite happy with it. Of course I don’t have to sort though 900 spam comments a day either!

    I just go in and skim scroll through them a couple times a day before I hit delete. It has been well over a month since I got a false positive on either of my blogs.

  • http://www.nyssajbrown.net/blog/ Nyssa

    I definitely know the feeling with Akismet as it kept catching your comments. It seems okay now, but it's catching TechZ's now. Can't escape it ;)

    I'll be switching over to SK2, as well, sometime. :)