Spam Bots and CAPTCHAs

Askimet claims to be an effective weapon in the war against spam, stopping it dead in its tracks once and for all. Whether or not you’ve had time to try it, here’s what you should know about it.

Short for Automated Kismet, Askimet is an automated spam killer that’s free as long as it’s for personal use. But if you’re using your blog to make money – which is what the majority of bloggers do – the creators prefer that you pay to use it. Although the cost is nominal it is nonetheless an expense.

The way Askimet works is really pretty simple. After installing this plug-in, Askimet sends every comment, trackback or pingback your blog receives – and those that hundreds of other Askimet users generate – to a central database. Based on a built-in algorithm Askimet then determines whether each entry is spam or whether it is legitimate.

If Askimet thinks it has found spam it saves the comment, trackback or pingback for 15 days in another database that you can access anytime.

Why would you need to access “spam�? that’s sent to this other Askimet database? After all, isn’t the whole point to be rid of it once for good? Well the Askimet algorithm is continuously undergoing a learning process and incorporating new rules as it encounters them. And while in this continual learning stage it sometimes misclassifies something as spam that really isn’t and vice versa.

When you and others retrieve what Askimet users call a “false-positive�? from this database you’re all helping Askimet learn to do its job more effectively by updating its rules guidelines.

Besides WordPress, you can plug Askimet into contact forms, Wikis, and forums. It understands languages other than English, too.

By now you’re probably thinking Askimet is definitely worth installing, right? Not so fast, there’s a dark side to Askimet that I’ll reveal in my next post.