Protect your site from spam

Every WordPress.com site comes with built-in spam protection from our Akismet service, which automatically filters spam from comments and form submissions. This guide explains how Akismet protects your site and how to adjust your spam settings.

Akismet is included automatically on every WordPress.com site, on every plan. It runs in the background, scanning incoming comments, form submissions, and more for spam patterns and flagging anything suspicious before it reaches your site.

Because spam protection is essential for keeping your site secure and trustworthy, Akismet cannot be turned off. There is nothing to install, activate, or configure to start using it — it just works.

Akismet protects your WordPress.com site from common types of spam:

• Comment spam: Unwanted comments left on your posts and pages, often containing promotional links or harmful content. For more on identifying and moderating comments, see Manage your site’s comments.
• Form spam: Junk submissions sent through contact forms and other forms on your site. For more on viewing form submissions, see Manage forms and responses.

Akismet also works alongside other plugins installed on your site to broaden its coverage, such as WooCommerce, where it filters spam from product reviews in your online store.

To see how much spam Akismet has caught for your site, follow these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → Akismet Anti-spam.
3. Review the totals for spam blocked, comments missed, and other statistics.

You can adjust how Akismet handles spam, comment displays, and privacy notices on your site:

1. From your site’s dashboard, go to Jetpack → Akismet Anti-spam.
2. Open the Settings tab.
3. Update the settings described below, then click Save changes.

The Comments setting shows the number of approved comments next to each comment author’s name. This helps readers recognize active and trusted commenters on your site.

The “Spam filtering” setting controls what Akismet does with spam after it is caught. Choose one of two approaches:

• Silently discard the worst and most pervasive spam: Akismet automatically deletes the most obvious spam so it never reaches your Spam folder. This keeps your folder cleaner, but you cannot review what was discarded.
• Always put spam in the Spam folder for review: All spam goes to your Spam folders (for comments and forms separately), where you can review and restore any messages that were flagged by mistake.

The Privacy setting helps your site comply with privacy laws like the GDPR. When this setting is on, Akismet displays a short notice under your comment forms letting visitors know their data is checked through Akismet’s spam service.

The “Tool access” setting controls whether AI assistants can connect to your Akismet data through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). When this setting is on, MCP clients can view your Akismet statistics and run spam checks on your behalf. For more on what MCP does and how to manage it, see Enable MCP tool access for AI agents.