Odd sequence of events: started receiving tons of comment spam after months of great service from akismet; notice the error:
The key below was previously validated but a connection to akismet.com can not be established at this time. Please check your server configuration.in the Akismet configuration panel.
And when I check my profile on wordpress.com, there is no API key listed on my profile any more -- which of course had been there for months.
Ideas?