owner automattic created by matt mullenweg launched 25 october 2005 ; 10 years ago 2005 10 25 alexa rank 4 398 april 2014 update 1 current status online akismet is a spam filtering service that filters spam from comments trackbacks and contact form messages . the filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating sites and then using those spam rules to block future spam . akismet is offered by automattic the company behind wordpress.com . 2 launched on october 25 2005 3 akismet is said to have captured over 100 billion spam comments and pings as of october 2013 . 4 contents 1 history 2 using akismet 3 development and distribution 4 references 5 external links history edit the founder of automattic matt mullenweg decided to create akismet so that his mother could blog in safety . 5 in 2005 there were ongoing discussions about how to deal with comment spam and a few plug ins were available . mullenweg s first attempt was a javascript plug in which modified the comment form and hid fields but within hours of its launch spammers downloaded it figured out how it worked and bypassed it . this is a common pitfall for anti spam plug ins ; once they get traction spammers pay attention and quickly figure out how to bypass them . in late 2005 mullenweg launched the akismet plug in for wordpress . akismet which stands for automattic kismet is a way of dealing with spam in aggregate a crowd sourced spam fighting tool . 6 each time someone posts a comment to a participating website akismet checks it against all the comments in the database . if it s spam it s deleted . if spam gets through and a user marks it as spam the comment is added to the database so the pool of spam comments widens making akismet increasingly effective over time . 7 6 using akismet edit akismet was originally developed to integrate with a plug in for wordpress . the akismet plug in has been included by default in all wordpress builds since version 2.0 8 and activated in all wordpress.com hosted blogs . a public akismet api has resulted in third party plug ins for other platforms . 9 one is an official akismet plug in release for the open source internet forum software discourse . 10 to use akismet it is necessary to obtain an api key . this key is necessary for a site to communicate with the akismet servers . development and distribution edit released under the terms of the gnu general public license 11 the akismet plug in is free software although the code to the akismet system itself and the nature of the algorithm used has not been released . the akismet service is free for personal use and as of march 2016 commercial plans start at 5 month . 12 references edit akismet.com site info . alexa internet . retrieved 2014 04 01 . automattic.com . automattic . live live . akismet . retrieved 15 july 2015 . akismet blocked its 100 000 000 000 th spam today . . akismet . retrieved 2014 10 31 . the biography of wordpress with matt mullenweg . mixergy . retrieved 15 july 2015 . a b wordpress book . github . retrieved 15 july 2015 . matt mullenweg talks about automattic and the commercial side of wordpress . . wordpress.org . retrieved 15 july 2015 . wordpress 2.0 . wordpress.org . retrieved 15 july 2015 . other application plugins . akismet . retrieved 2015 06 15 . discourse 1.2 released . discourse . akismet plugin source in gpl wordpress plugin directory . akismet plans . akismet . retrieved 9 march 2016 . external links edit official website availability stats retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title akismet & oldid 723681730 categories spam filteringwordpressanti spamautomattichidden categories articles containing potentially dated statements from april 2014all articles containing potentially dated statements navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutschportugu s edit links this page was last modified on 4 june 2016 at 14 57 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view