Okay, yes, I admit it. Sometimes I can be like a dog with a bone. I won’t let go. I’ve been this way with regard to the recent disappearing spam phenomenon. I’ve been going back and forth with the happiness engineers insisting that something has changed, that something is different. I’m tired of being told nothing has changed other than I’m getting less spam than I did before.

In my last contact with the HEs, I wrote…

In the middle of this month, suddenly my daily spam comments dropped from double digits to zero on most days. I know spam comes and goes and the daily fluctuations can be significant. But I never remember a time when I was consistently getting no spam comments day after day.

I’m not the only blogger who has had this happen. I may be the only one who has contacted WordPress about it, but based upon comments I’ve received to several of my posts on this matter as well as posts from some other bloggers that I’ve read, others have seen the same fall off from dozens of daily spam comments to zero.

I'd be delighted if suddenly all of the spammers who used to comment on my blog have, all at once, lost interest in me or saw the error of their ways and gave up the spammer life. But I doubt that’s the case.

Well, I finally received the definitive answer today.

I actually think the FBI may have helped you out here! https://www.fbi.gov/news/ stories/fbi-partners-dismantle-qakbot-infrastructure-in-multinational-cyber-takedown.

At the end of August they took down a large botnet that was being used for all sorts of malicious purposes. I would strongly suspect that this botnet was involved in posting large amounts of spam, and the spammers have not yet recovered from it.

So now we know. It’s not that any spam-related changes were implemented by WordPress or Akismet or Jetpack. No, it was the crack Federal Bureau of Investigation that disrupted and dismantled a malware and botnet farm, and that is the reason why we’re getting no more spam comments in our spam folders on WordPress.

And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to Brooklyn that I’d like to sell you.