I use the Akismet plugin for Wordpress to filter out the spam comments that come in here. When I write this, it has caught 542 comments on this blog. I just took a quick look at the Akismet stats page where they show the total number it has caught and was amazed to see the plugin has stopped over 3.5 billion spam comments since the beginning of 2006.

This is compared to about 320 million "ham" comments (their term for legitimate ones) - about 10 times as much spam as real comments.

What got me looking at this? A silly item on my Wordpress dashboard page about going "naked" for a day for Akismet.

It seems a blogger named Jesper Rønn-Jensen is going to turn off all spam protection on his site for the day on December 15.

He's way ahead of me - he's getting 2000-3000 spams a day and just hit the 500,000 mark. I can't imagine having to delete 2000-3000 comments, even if just for one day.

I don't think I need to turn off my spam protection for a day to know how helpful Akismet is. If you're dealing with spam on your blog, I recommend giving Akismet a try. You'll save yourself some time and aggravation.

How about you - what are you using to block spam on your blog?