Akismet Can't Connect to Server

Akismet is reporting “We can’t connect to your site. Your firewall may be blocking us. Please contact your host and refer to our guide about firewalls.” This started a couple weeks ago.

When I type sudo ufw status, it says sudo: ufw: command not found.

When I type iptables -L, it says

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

which I guess means I don’t have any rules. Akismet says in their docs that they need a TCP connection. I don’t know how to give them that. I also don’t know what changed two weeks ago as it was working fine before that.

What else can I check? Is there a way to ping Akismet through TCP to make sure that’s the issue?

Ubuntu 12.10, Wordpress 4.0, Akismet 3.02

Thanks