Trackbacks: The Real Blog Spam Problem

If your WordPress blog is inundated with spam, try disabling Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) in Options > Discussion.

My blog delightfully ran spam-free for years. Then suddenly, a tidal wave of comment spam hit. I installed Spam Karma, which prevented 100% of the comment spam from appearing on my blog.

However, Spam Karma was a reactionary solution. The comment spam still infiltrated WordPress and my database before Spam Karma could analyze and discard. My blog began to use more CPU cycles and my WordPress database swelled.

To be more pro-active in my fight against comment spam, I added a challenge & response text field to verify those commenting were real humans. Spam still got through, even though my hack seemingly worked.

I enabled Users must be registered and logged in to comment in WordPress. I hate registering for sites myself and didn’t want to implement this burden on my visitors. Comments to my entries decreased sharply and Spam Karma kept processing hundreds of comment spams a day.

No one on the WordPress support forum could give an explanation. Finally, I found a suggestion that the spam might be TrackBacks instead of comments. I disabled TrackBacks, turned Spam Karma off, left user registration on, and I have not had a single spam since.

TrackBacks are disabled on my blog forever because they’re unjustified technology and poorly conceived (by the geniuses at Six Apart, no less). User registration for commenting will be turned off and I will re-implement my challenge and response hack soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 19:36 and is tagged .

2 Responses to “Trackbacks: The Real Blog Spam Problem”

  1. mike3k Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 21:50

    I really like the Akismet plugin. It has caught over 600 comment spams and none of them slipped through. I also use a plugin to automatically close comments on a post after a certain length of time.

  2. Testy Says:
    October 31st, 2006 at 9:47

    Akismet still requires the spam to be stored and processed. Like Jeremiah said it’s “reactionary.”