I Hate Spam: Trackback Edition

Just saw Tom Evslin's post on Trackback Spam: Trackback and Kudzu. I'm a fairly new blogger, so I got thrown into this whole comment spam, trackback spam, trackback denials, comment denials, trackback reviewing, comment reviewing, pingbacks, etc. All I really want to do is get an automatic trackback to the article that I write. That rarely happens for me. And, what's up with Typepad Trackback URI addresses? You can't derive them from the article URL. It's enough to make your head spin.

Anyway, Tom describes how he is trying to overcome the problem of spammers hitting his trackbacks. It's a battle you can't win by reviewing posts. Period. Don't even try.

However, I'm on Wordpress and signed up for the free Akismet service. Stats from the Akismet site:

• 188,126,901 spams caught so far


• 1,458,600 so far today


• 92% of all comments are spam

It works great. I can have trackbacks and comments wide open. Akismet catches the spam for me. Occasionally, something is marked as spam that is not, but it is definitely the exception. Most of the good conversations get through. And, I don't have to spend hours each day fighting spam instead of adding to the global conversations.

Tom's on Typepad. I don't know if bloggers that use Typepad can sign up for Akismet or not. If they can't, then they should consider switching to Wordpress and signing up for Akismet.

Of course, I did this article with a Trackback to Tom's original post. We'll see if it shows up!

Bottom line: Let's all support Akismet and get trackbacks and comments open for humans and closed for spammers!

Tags: Spam, Akismet, Wordpress, Typepad, Trackbacks, Blogging, Brian Berliner, brianberliner