All the genuine form submissions on my website seem to be getting flagged by the Akismet spam filter. Is there a way I can disable this?
Thank you very much.
hmm, interesting (and frustrating).
are ALL submissions getting sent to spam? or just some?
All of them for now. Although the set of messages for now is small. Here is an example of a message that should have passed spam validation:
Hello, do you have any information on the transmission of the virus in water (swimming pool, sea)? Thank you...
May 5
From
[redacted]
Replyto
[redacted]@gmail.com
ok, thanks. so for some reason it seems akismet is marking all submissions as spam, as opposed to just marking too many.
What is the netlify site name for this, please?
Hey Uzay-G,
I’ve checked in with the team about this, and unfortunately I don’t have a good answer for you right now.
We don’t actually directly control how Akismet filters spam - and at present, there is no way to opt out of Akismet spam filtering for your Netlify forms.
I encourage you to keep checking the submissions that go to spam and marking them as appropriate, hopefully, with time, Akismet will get smarter around covid/virus filtering - and i have added your request to an open issue to provide the ability to deactivate spam filtering entirely. I don’t have an ETA for that work though, but we will reply here when it happens. Sorry I don’t have better news for the time being!
I have the same problem. Started 1-2 weeks ago. All submissions go to spam…
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xcvb, which site is this regarding? is it a corona related site like Uzay-G’s? It seems like that might have something to do with it. Seems like Akismet isn’t yet smart enough to distinguish between real questions regarding covid and fake ones.
It’s a personal dashboard web app, not Corona related in any way. I use the web app to track habits, workouts etc. I use the forms to input data to a google sheet via zapier. It’s been running for 6 months without trouble. Only had trouble the last 1-2 weeks. As of know I have to login to Netlify each time I log something in the dashbord web app to verify the submission. Deactivating spam would be nice as I am the only one having access, but if there is no ETA for this an alternative solution while waiting for that functionality would be nice.
hmm, that is indeed frustrating.
We have an open feature request I can add your voice to re: being able to switch off akismet completely, but, i have no ETA for that as it is not an issue for folks most of the time.
If i were you, your best option is to log in regularly and make sure you mark the non-spam stuff as such, hopefully that helps train akismet to not mark legit things as spam. Sorry I don’t have better news for you at this time!
If akismet is marking my submissions as spam now after 6 months without any trouble (and now every submission) the spam filter is clearly not working. This issue must be affecting more users than have raised their voices. A wild guess is that a lot of users is missing messages due to them being placed in spam.
Logging in to Netlify and mark submissions is sadly no solution. Been doing this for 1-2 weeks without any improvement and the spam filter as of now just dont make sense. Akismet must have done some changes lately that is affecting users.
Hey xcvb, i totally empathize with your situation - i bet it is frustrating to have non-spam messages be landing in your spam filter. Do you have a count for us on how many times this has happened? Do you have more information on when this started, exactly? I am not sure who to talk to about this, but i will see what i can do, and having as many specifics as possible as to when/how this problem started showing up might be helpful. thanks.
Thanks Perry. It’s frustrating, but at the same a re-write of my App is in place. I use Netlify forms and Zapier to post data to a Google sheet, I also collect data from the same sheet via Sheets API. So I can just drop Netlify forms/Zapier and post the data directly via the Sheets API. No need to investigate further. Also thinking about It my submissions must be a bit weird, almost always from the same IP and somewhat repetetive. It was just strange that It have worked for 6 months and now lately started marking submissions as spam. Thanks for providing a great service and having a free plan for us hobbyist and also taking the time to answer in the forums. And to the thread starter, sorry for hi-jacking your post.
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I am also having an issue, thought it was because I’d added ReCaptcha to the form, spent ages debugging until I eventually removed all changes and went back to the original form only to find I was getting the same issue.
Every form entry ends up in the spam section, also had somebody else try which did the same.
hey wezlar, sorry to hear you are having a bit of a rough go with spam protection.
Unfortunately, the akismet part of our forms is something we have very little (as in none, really) control over - we literally buy the akismet platform, integrated it into our form handling, and they do the rest. And akismet itself is quite a behemoth, as it is based on wordpress spam “trends”. Kind of like how we can’t bend the google algorithm to our will - its sort of the same with akismet. Not the answer you wanted to hear, I’m sure, and I’m sorry I don’t have better news.
All I can suggest is to keep marking the valid submissions as not spam to help train the algo, and if there are any developments, we can definitely let you know.
Is there any update on this issue? I’m experiencing the same issue.
In my case, it’s a Resort website. This website is for a client who will prefer to not manually verifying every form submission.
hi @omargee, we havent made any changes to how are forms interact with our spam protection (akismet) since July I’m afraid. The only advice is the same as I can give above! sorry i don’t have better news for you 
Hey Perry,
I’ve also just started running into this issue on a website with an editable textarea. The form is for inquiries and has a default message inside the textarea which the user can either leave as is, or edit to include their own text.
I know that above you’ve said essentially the Akismet service is essentially a black box, but I was wondering if you think these submissions are being flagged as spam because lots of users are submitting the form with the default message? And if so, do you have any advice on how to get around this?
Thanks!
hi @kieranstartup, we’ve thought about this a bit, and we don’t have a really great solution for you apart from leaving the field blank so it doesn’t offend akismet?
Another suggestion i am suddenly thinking of - could you write some custom code to strip out the default text if it hasn’t been changed so it doesn’t get submitted? that way you could still leave it in.
I’m also running into this problem.
I understand that there’s no control over Akismet in terms of deciding whether a message is spam or not, but perhaps there could be an option of still triggering webhooks and/or email hooks even if a submission is categorised as spam?
I’d rather get one or two spam messages come through via email than miss potentially valuable messages in my inbox.
Thank you!