Trackback and comment SPAM has been the scourge of many bloggers that I visit. I’ve seen a variety of methods for dealing with this flotsam. Turing numbers or text that has to be entered with comments being one such solution. This will supposedly stop automated entries – although I have heard that this can be overcome. It is a problem that also occurs in discussion fora and I notice that the NO2ID forum has been recently plagued by spammers spamvertising online casinos. So how do you stop it? When we pay for webspace, we do not do so to provide free advertising space for SPAMmers. On News & Views (so far SPAM free) I’ve disabled guest posting. If you want to post (or even see all of the discussion fora) you have to register. This at least places a hoop in the way of potential spammers. If they get past that, I have a range of admin and moderation options to deal with them should the worst happen.
But what about blogs and comment/trackback SPAM? Up until now, there wasn’t much I could do. I don’t host my own blog, so moderation was always limited to dealing with problems after the event. Fortunately for me, this has been a hypothetical issue. However, several people on Blog City have experienced problems. I had already decided to disable the blogboard if SPAMmers decided that I was a free advertising host for their casino or poker game. Rather take it offline than let these people use it. Comments and trackbacks however are there for all to see until the blog owner logs on and deals with it and while I would cheerfully lose the blogboard, I would not wish to lose the comments or trackback facility.
Until now. Yesterday, I got my first trackback SPAM. There was the usual email alerting me to the trackback. However, crucially, it was not live on the site. I had to approve it manually before it would appear. Suffice to say; it didn’t. Comments are now also subject to moderation at the discretion of the blog owner. At the moment, mine is set to appear straight away. However, should the SPAMmers strike, I’ll use the moderation facility.
I have some reservations about the new look Blog City, but this one is spot on.
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