Stephane Daury (stephdau)

Hi @boldt

The Akismet plugin leverages the following action to add that privacy notice, which all themes normally implement: https://plugins.trac.www.ads-software.com/browser/akismet/trunk/class.akismet.php?rev=1882139#L56

add_action( 'comment_form_after', array( 'Akismet', 'display_comment_form_privacy_notice' ) );

See https://developer.www.ads-software.com/reference/hooks/comment_form_after/

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Daury (stephdau).

Hey Phil.

We’ll look into it, doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi there,

It’s possible you might have to update the language files for your site by visiting wp-admin/update-core.php first (see bottom). My notice was in English on my (French) test site until I used the built-in, user-controlled, WP updater.

Here’s how it looks after update, on my test site: https://cloudup.com/cBvoVSlDbVv

Which comes from https://translate.www.ads-software.com/projects/wp-plugins/akismet/stable/fr/default?filters%5Bstatus%5D=either&filters%5Boriginal_id%5D=6144187&filters%5Btranslation_id%5D=55586239

Sure thing.

Extra note: to help you with your own privacy policy, Akismet is also integrating with WP’s new privacy tools found in wp-admin/privacy.php, providing you sample text in their “Privacy Policy Guide” page, under wp-admin/tools.php?wp-privacy-policy-guide (see under WordPress’ own text)

See https://cloudup.com/ce7acVvXq97

Actually, that’s not technically true: the comment meta associated with Akismet will be left in your database, as it is a WordPress-level record of what happened to the comment(s) at the time of processing. Clearing that would leave a hole in your site’s processing history that would then leave you helpless, should you try to trace a comment’s history, and would be an unrequested and undesirabe data erasure by the plugin. You, as a site owner, can of course feel free to erase whatever data you feel is necessary.

Akismet also checks pingbacks, in case you left the related option on: “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles”, in wp-admin/options-discussion.php

The solution pointed out by @mcgyver70 is the best way to achieve this indeed. That filter was specifically added for this purpose.

Note that your own privacy policy should still point to https://akismet.com/privacy (which will have the info or redirect to the proper info, as it does now).

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Daury (stephdau).
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Daury (stephdau).

Thanks for the note. This has already been fixed in the development version, and will be part of the next version: https://plugins.trac.www.ads-software.com/changeset/1887011

The warning seems to be coming from wp-content/plugins/simple-lightbox.

You can find their support forum here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/simple-lightbox

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Daury (stephdau).

Sure: the plugin does not set any cookies.

We understand the importance of complying with these regulations on your site, and appreciate the seriousness with which you are approaching protecting the privacy of your site’s users.

If you decide you no longer wish to use Akismet on your site, we’d be sad to see you go. We feel confident that it is possible to run a site that complies with GDPR while also using Akismet, or any of our other products/services. However, we know that sometimes our products aren’t the right fit for everyone.

When Akismet is enabled on your site, only the personal data needed to carry out its core function of protecting you against comment spam is collected. In the language of the GDPR, this is a “legitimate interest” use of that data. In our view, additional opt-ins/notifications are not needed and can be potentially confusing.

There was a suggestion from another poster in this thread that we are selling the data we collect via Akismet. Note that we do not sell the personal data collected through Akismet or any other Automattic product. For more details, please review our Privacy Policy here:

https://automattic.com/privacy/

With further Akismet-specific details under https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/

Lastly, please note that we don’t keep the Akismet data for very long. We have a short retention period for this data of ninety days at a maximum, and all spam-related data is automatically erased, regardless, at that point.

If you have any other questions about how Akismet is complying with the GDPR, please let us know.

@mylibrarycardworeout: hi there,

The latest version of the plugin is now fine.

If you cannot login to wp-admin, your quickest path to fixing your site will be to download the latest version (https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/akismet.4.0.6.zip) to your computer, expand it, and upload the content of the directory to wp-content/plugins/akismet/ via FTP.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Stephane Daury (stephdau).

Now, you did mention a linguistic website, which might get more complex, if the same site sports countless languages. The plugin will adapt to a site’s defined language, but anything more complicated would need to be custom coded by their devs around WP’s WP_LANG constant and get_locale(). They could, for example, set it on a per user basis, etc. This is beyond the scope of what the generic Akismet plugin is intended to do, but at least it can be extended to. ??

Hi there, sorry to hear that.

The plugin actually does that on its own, based on the value WP’s get_locale() function returns, and transmits it to the API.

[~/akismet-trunk]# grep -rn blog_lang . --include="*.php"
./class.akismet.php:12:	private static $comment_as_submitted_allowed_keys = array( 'blog' => '', 'blog_charset' => '', 'blog_lang' => '', 'blog_ua' => '', 'comment_agent' => '', 'comment_author' => '', 'comment_author_IP' => '', 'comment_author_email' => '', 'comment_author_url' => '', 'comment_content' => '', 'comment_date_gmt' => '', 'comment_tags' => '', 'comment_type' => '', 'guid' => '', 'is_test' => '', 'permalink' => '', 'reporter' => '', 'site_domain' => '', 'submit_referer' => '', 'submit_uri' => '', 'user_ID' => '', 'user_agent' => '', 'user_id' => '', 'user_ip' => '' );
./class.akismet.php:143:		$comment['blog_lang']    = get_locale();
./class.akismet.php:514:		$c['blog_lang']      = get_locale();
./class.akismet.php:653:		$comment->blog_lang    = get_locale();
./class.akismet.php:703:		$comment->blog_lang    = get_locale();

See https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Function_Reference/get_locale

So if the site is set to Russian, it should benefit from said API.

See https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Installing_WordPress_in_Your_Language