This will probably be the last spam milestone we blog for a while, but a few hours ago Akismet passed 100,000,000 spams blocked. Whoa.
When we hit one million spams blocked I talked about how much time Akismet has saved its users if you made the assumption of 1 second per spam that Akismet caught and you never had to see. Going by that same formula, Akismet has now saved folks 27,777 hours or about 3.2 years of consectutive 24-hour days.
This of course doesn’t include time saved by regular commenters not having to deal with difficult-to-read CAPTCHA images, boil-the-ocean authentication schemes, or complicated confirmation systems.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Podz, who has been helping out a tremendous amount on the support side of things, and all the developers who have built plugins or libraries on top of the Akismet API, as they have brought the Akismet experience far beyond the world of WordPress.
If we’re doing our job right, you should forget Akismet even exists. Its presence should be defined much like silence — the absence of noisy spam.
Update: You can Digg this story.
Akismet 
Congrats guys, and more importantly; thank you!
The blogosphere couldn’t live without you now!
Don’t be too sure about the milestone. I’m sure we’ll be surpassing it very soon.
Thanks for continuing to save us from the time and hassles spammers bring on us.
-Huey
Congrats and thanks! Seriously… it’s a blessing to see that at least my personal blog is kept clean.
Wow! I represent only a tiny slice of that rather large pie, but I’m grateful.
Of which 410 came my way. Would’ve been 413, but two were legit, and one wasn’t caught. That last got deleted. Still, 410 out of 413 is a pretty good record.
Let’s hope the day comes soon when a spammer’s first (and only) mass mailing results in a visit from the police within an hour after it goes out.
thank you for this wonderful plugin/service. It is reliable, transparent, and free! how cool is that?
Congrats! And to think, having installed it less than a week ago, my own blog contributed 2,000+ blocked spam comments to the count. Not a single false positive either.
Akismet is probably the best spam fighting tool available and appreciate all the hard work you’ve all put into it.
Wow, great job! Akismet is the best spam fighter that I’ve ever seen.
Thanks to all who have made Akismet possible. It is truly a blessing.
My personal blogs only attract minimal spam … but the 125 spam comments my poodle blog attracted would’ve been a major annoyance and time-waster for me.
It’s just such a relief not having to worry any more!
Congrats, and most of all, thanks! My blog/site had barely been live for more than a week before it started receiving spam – it’s almost as if the spam bots discovered it before the major search engines did.
If only spam software writers focused their efforts at something more admirable… like developing anti-spam services.
Once again, thanks, as I’m sure many people like me would have to resort to more intrusive methods to fix spam; instead we use Akismet, which “just works”.
134,708 spam caught here, only two false positives in the whole lot.
Thank you, Askimet!
Yeah, I’m coming up on my own milestone: 2,000 spam caught. I’ve only had one legitimate comment accidentally caught up as spam and just a handle of spams have been missed. That’s a pretty damn good record. I love it. Thank you guys!
I don’t know what I would do without it. I am happy it has been so successful
Thanks for keeping my personal blog clean! You’re one of the best spamfighters ever! (serious!) You outrun Spam Karma by MILES!!! Keep it up!!
Congrats and thanks for the great service. In the short time I have been using Akismet, it has blocked nearly 500 spam messages (which is a lot for a small site like mine) and all have been actual spam. Thanks again!
12,525 spam killed by Akismet here since April 1…you have a great service that no blogger should be without.
So, what blog caught the 100 millionth spam?
Wow! Impressive numbers.
A quick calc has my blog having received over 0.1% of those spam comments! At 109,633 and rising every few minutes, Akismet as saved me a lot of time. I don’t even check for false positives too often now. Though I still feel bad about it.
Congrats Matt, this is an excellent product. So good I even paid!
Mike
Amazing to think that in just a month we accounted for .25% of that spam (nearly 250,000 spam attempts in a month). We’ll try and do better next time Matt, I promise 😉
I think 1 second / spam is very, very conservative. Thanks Automattic!
your spam tool is just GREAT
without this, i get thousands of spam each day;
thanks!
Thanks so much for your work folks. Comment spam has never been much of an issue for me thanks to Akismet. Though mine isn’t the most popular site in the world, Akismet has caught 600+ spam comments. Thanks for saving me a lot of time I would have had to spend deleting a bunch of nonsense.
Cheers!