I have used Akismet blog spam filtering on this blog for several years now, but at least one or two blog spams get through every day and generate an email like the following:

A new comment on the post #365 “True Data Portability” is waiting for your approval
http://www.equalsdrummond.name/?p=365

Author : Edmundo Bohne (IP: 200.141.202.162 , 200.141.202.162)
E-mail : Susie.R.Crowell@google.com
URL    : http://www.dietplanstoloseweightfastnow.com
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=200.141.202.162
Comment:
It may sound weird but my browser doesn’t appear to be in a position to display your article rightly It looks like a whole chunk of if is not correctly displayed and the layout of the page doesn’t appear to be right. Are you able to confirm that this post has been setup for Opera?

The most annoying part is I CAN’T FILTER THEM OUT because it could be a legitimate comment coming through for approval, and of course that’s the proverbial wheat I can’t separate from the chaff. That’s also the reason I don’t turn off comments altogether — the value of the real comments outweighs the hassle of the spam.

Akismet likes to say, “Set it and forget it; Akismet gets smarter while you sleep.” God bless them, I know they are doing the best they can, but unfortunately the spammers appear to be winning; the rate of false negatives is rising.

There’s a better way to put an end to this nonsense once and for all — it just takes a completely different approach. That’s a key aspect of what I’m working on in the new startup. Keep a watch on this space — I promise I’ll post about it when it’s ready.

(In the meantime, if there are any WordPress plugin warriors who want to help deliver this solution as much as I do, ping me via my contact page and let’s talk.)