Is anyone else using the Akismet comment spam filter getting hit big time by spam today?
I’m not sure if it’s down, whether someone’s found a way past it or whether I’m just getting a massive attack and the normal small % of spam is getting through – but for the last couple of hours I’ve had so much comment spam that I’m deleting it as fast as it’s coming in!
This happened last week for a few hours one day also.
Looking at the numbers of what Akismet is stopping it does seem to be working to some degree (as the total number is going up) but it’s definitely not getting everything today.
Very odd.
PS: Looking at their graph tracking spam it seems that the last 24 hours or so have seen a massive spike in spam attacks.
update: The spam attack has continued. It’s been 6 hours now with it coming in as fast as 2 to 3 comments per second (thats just what Akismet isn’t stopping – add to that what it is stopping and it’s a massive attack).
I’ve noticed that this often happens on weekends – I guess spammers know its a time that bloggers are online and less likely to be dealing with it.
I’ve also been watching the Akismet graph and even though there is still 14 hours left in the day the amount of spam it’s reporting is almost as high as yesterday and yesterday was the second highest recorded day of comment spam in the time since they started tracking it. Looks like today will be a new record.
I have enabled the option in WP to make sure that you have to have had a comment approved previously for your comment to escape moderation. This means none of the spam is actually going up live on the blog which is something at least. It does mean however that I have a massive list of comments to moderate (legit ones and spam). Apologies to first time commenters whose comments are all being put in the queue.
If this doesn’t stop before I go to bed in a couple of hours I might need to disable comments overnight tonight as I don’t really feel like facing 500-1000 comment spams when I wake up tomorrow! Apologies in advance if I do disable them – it’ll be temporary.
