Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee

Antispam plugin with a sophisticated tool set for effective day to day comment and trackback spam-fighting. Build with data protection and privacy in …
Rating:
4.8
star-rating-1star-rating-2star-rating-3star-rating-4star-rating-5
Active Installations:
700000+
Last Updated:
Nov 12, 2024
WordPress Version:
4.6 or higher
Tested up to:
6.7.2

Say Goodbye to Spam

Blocks spam comments and trackbacks effectively, without captchas and without sending personal information to third party services.

Trust Approved Commenters

Trust commenters with a Gravatar and consider the comment time.

Powerful Spam Detection

Use regular expressions, search local spam database for previously marked spammers, and notify admins by email about incoming spam.

2.11.7

  • Tweak: Use SCRIPT_NAME instead of REQUEST_URI to check path
  • Fix: Remove add_reasons_to_defaults() from general initialization for better WordPress 6.7 compatibility
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 6.7

2.11.6

  • Fix: Delete missed out option on uninstall (Thanks @okvee!)
  • Tweak: Minor i18n improvements (Thanks Pedro!)
  • Tweak: Minor code changes and housekeeping
  • Tweak: Updated dependencies

2.11.5

IMPORTANT: If you use the country check and are behind a proxy or similar, you need to use the antispam_bee_trusted_ip filter to get the correct IP from a header like HTTP_X_FORWARDED (don’t return an empty value here, otherwise all comments are marked as spam).

  • Fix: Usage of core filter pre_comment_user_ip breaks ASB if the IP address is removed for GDPR compliance

2.11.4

IMPORTANT: If you use the country check and are behind a proxy or similar, you need to use the pre_comment_user_ip filter to get the correct IP from a header like HTTP_X_FORWARDED.

  • Fix: Read client IP for country check from REMOTE_ADDR only (filterable via pre_comment_user_ip)
  • Fix: No spam reason in spam notification email, and related PHP warning
  • Fix: Remove outdated info from readme
  • Enhancement: Show upgrade notice on plugin overview page
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 6.3

2.11.3

  • Fix: Multiselect for “Delete comments by spam reasons” was not saving values
  • Fix: Fix broken link for ISO country codes
  • Maintenance: Added test for PHP 8.2
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 6.2

2.11.2

  • Tweak: remove superfluous translations
  • Tweak: make FAQ link an anchor link
  • Fix: spam counter no longer raises a warning with PHP 8.1 if no spam is present yet
  • Fix: spam reasons are now localized correctly
  • Fix: Translations were loaded twice on some admin pages
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 6.1

2.11.1

  • Tweak: remove superfluous type attribute from inline script tag
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 6.0

2.11.0

  • Fix: Allow empty comments if allow_empty_comment is set to true
  • Fix: Add aria-label to work around bug in a11y testing tools
  • Fix: Change priority for comment_form_field_comment from 10 to 99
  • Tweak: Updated some FAQ entries
  • Tweak: Updated build tooling

2.10.0

  • Fix: Switch from ip2country.info to iplocate.io for country check
  • Enhancement: Use filter to add the honeypot field instead of output buffering for new installations and added option to switch between the both ways
  • Tweak: Added comment user agent to regex pattern check
  • Tweak: Make the ping detection filterable to support new comment types
  • Tweak: Updated internal documentation links
  • Tweak: Several updates and optimizations in the testing process
  • Tweak: Adjust color palette to recent WP version
  • Tweak: Adjust wording in variables and option names
  • Readme: Add new contributor and clean up unused code

2.9.4

  • Enhancement: Add filter to allow ajax calls
  • Tweak: Better wording for BBCode feature in plugin description
  • Tweak: Better screenshots in the plugin directory
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 5.7

2.9.3

  • Fixed: Compatibility with WordPress 5.5
  • Fixed: Undefined index on spam list page
  • Tweak: Better wording on settings page
  • Tweak: AMP compatibility
  • Tweak: Protect CSS from overwrite through bad themes

2.9.2

  • Fix: Delete comment meta for deleted old spam. For the cleanup of older orphaned comment meta we suggest the usage of WP Sweep
  • Fix: Statistic in dashboard showed wrong value
  • Tweak: Change autocomplete attribute to “new-password”
  • Tweak: Autoptimize compatibility improved
  • Tweak: Renamed blacklist/whitelist to a better phrase
  • Tweak: Added new pattern
  • Tweak: UI and text optimizations
  • Tweak: Better compatibility with some server configurations
  • Tweak: Make spam reason sortable and filterable
  • Tweak: Add spam reason for manually marked spam
  • Maintenance: Deleted unused code
  • Maintenance: Removed Fake IP check (unreliable and producing false positives)
  • Maintenance: Fix some coding standard issues
  • Maintenance: Tested up to WordPress 5.4
  • Maintenance: Tested up to PHP 7.4

2.9.1

  • Improved backend accessibility
  • Prefilled comment textareas do now work with the honeypot
  • Compatible with the AMP plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/)
  • Improved dashboard tooltips
  • Improvements for the language detection API
  • Scalable IP look up for local spam database

2.9.0

  • Introduction of coding standards.
  • Switch to franc language detection API for the language check.
  • Do not longer overwrite the IP address WordPress saves with the comment by using pre_comment_user_ip.
  • Do not show “Trust commenters with a Gravatar” if the “Show Gravatar” option is not set.
  • Skip the checks, when I ping myself.
  • Fixes some wrong usages of the translation functions.
  • Use the regular expressions check also for trackbacks.
  • Add option to delete Antispam Bee related data when plugin gets deleted via the admin interface.
  • Save a hashed + salted IP for every comment
  • New check for incoming trackbacks.
  • Introduction of behat tests.
  • Updates the used JavaScript library for the statistics widget.
  • Bugfix in the “Comment form used outside of posts” option.

2.8.1

  • PHP 5.3 compatibility
  • Bugfix where a spam trackback produced a fatal error
  • For more details see https://github.com/pluginkollektiv/antispam-bee/milestone/8?closed=1

2.8.0

  • Removed stopforumspam.com to avoid potential GDPR violation
  • Improves IP handling to comply with GDPR
  • Improves PHP7.2 compatibility
  • Fixes small bug on mobile views
  • Allow more than one language in language check
  • Minor interface improvements
  • Remove old russian and Dutch translation files
  • For more details see https://github.com/pluginkollektiv/antispam-bee/milestone/4?closed=1

2.7.1

  • Fixes an incompatibility with Chrome autofill
  • Fixes some incompatibilities with other plugins/themes where the comment field was left empty
  • Support for RTL
  • Solve some translation/language issues
  • A new filter to add languages to the language check
  • For more details see https://github.com/pluginkollektiv/antispam-bee/milestone/6?closed=1

2.7.0

  • Country check is back again (thanks to Sergej Müller for his amazing work and the service page)
  • Improved Honeypot
  • Language check through Google Translate API is back again (thanks to Simon Kraft of https://moenus.net/ for offering to cover the costs)
  • More default Regexes
  • Unit Test Framework
  • Accessibility and GUI improvements
  • An english documentation is now available, too. Some corrections in the german documentation.
  • Some bugfixes – Among other things for WPML compatibility
  • For more details see https://github.com/pluginkollektiv/antispam-bee/milestone/3?closed=1

2.6.9

  • Updates donation links throughout the plugin
  • Fixes an error were JavaScript on the dashboard was erroneously being enqueued
  • Ensures compatibility with the latest WordPress version

2.6.8

  • added a POT file
  • updated German translation, added formal version
  • updated plugin text domain to include a dash instead of an underscore
  • updated, translated + formatted README.md
  • updated expired link URLs in plugin and languages files
  • updated plugin authors

2.6.7

  • Removal of functions Block comments from specific countries and Allow comments only in certain language for financial reasons – more information

2.6.6

  • Switch to the official Google Translation API
  • Release time investment (Development & QA): 2.5 h

2.6.5

  • Fix: Return parameters on dashboard_glance_items callback / thx @toscho
  • New function: Trust commenters with a Gravatar / thx @glueckpress
  • Additional plausibility checks and filters
  • Release time investment (Development & QA): 12 h

2.6.4

  • Consideration of the comment time (Spam if a comment was written in less than 5 seconds) – more information
  • Release time investment (Development & QA): 6.25 h

2.6.3

  • Sorting for the Antispam Bee column in the spam comments overview
  • Code refactoring around the use of REQUEST_URI
  • Release time investment (Development & QA): 2.75 h

2.6.2

  • Improving detection of fake IPs
  • Release time investment (Development & QA): 11 h

2.6.1

  • Code refactoring of options management
  • Support for HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR header
  • Release time investment (Development & QA): 8.5 h

2.6.0

  • Optimizations for WordPress 3.8
  • Clear invalid UTF-8 characters in comment fields
  • Spam reason as a column in the table with spam comments

For the complete changelog, check out our GitHub repository.

Exceptional plugin

By justinw1970 on May 25, 2025

Have used this for years. Should have left a review before now. This is a real gem of a plugin. Have it on all my sites. Long may it continue!

Easy and Clean

By Jason Ball (jasonfintips) on May 5, 2025

Easy and clean to use.

I had to find where to review... impressed!

By hmibarrylsalter on March 10, 2025

On one of my sites, I was having a real tough time with crap like, slot machines and by bitcoin and just all this junk I had to go and delete. Today I found "1" after months of not going into the back end of this site, ONE spam and I hit spam and it went away... Later today, I'm going to go load antispam bee on all my clients sites.... I've had clients with thousands of spams and I don't have time for this... Oh and I tried jetpack, it caused issues and I deleted it won't bother with it again.

Incredible!

By dolceremy (centoasa) on March 7, 2025

I tried so many, even the most famous ones, but they all still passed spam, and I was forced to delete them at least every 3 days. With this plugin spam zero, you read it right zero!

Sehr zuverlässig

By hmgt (hugomarianogimeneztoledo) on February 12, 2025

Ich verwende das Plugin seit Jahren und bin sehr zufrieden.

Easy to use and works well.

By Web Design Cheshire (coderra) on January 20, 2025

Easy to setup and use and is highly effective.

Privacy-friendly spam filter

By kelson (Kelson) on December 15, 2024

Works quite well without calling out to a remote service, and doesn't require your visitors to be using JavaScript. (Seriously, I posted a test comment using Dillo and it showed up in the moderation queue!) No need to deal with API keys or licensing.

There are some optional tactics that will call a remote service for things like language identification, but so far it's doing the job fine without them!

The only problem I've had with it is that it only acts on comments, not on other features like contact forms.

So easy to use!

By nealumphred on November 30, 2024

Excellent plugin! So easy to use that even a simpleton like me got it right on my first try.

Keep on keepin' on ...

The best option

By leakp on November 18, 2024

I have tried many antispam plugins - Antispam Bee is the best by far. I highly recommend them. They solved spamming on my site.

Beautiful

By Thane (thanewest) on October 15, 2024

An absolute unit, what else is there to say? Antispam Bee is simply the best.

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