Not the same SPAM that was happening before.

The simple comment fix I put into place is still holding. Well, maybe more than expected as no one comments on my blog, although that's not unusual.

Now the trackback SPAM has started. A trackback seems to be a particular kind of post meant to connect blog entries to each other. They come with a URL to the originating post, and are added as a special kind of comment to the target post. That description sounds backwards from what I think is the intended use.

Take this post for example. If one wanted to comment, there's a nice comment form at the bottom of the page. If one wanted to create a bigger response on their own blog, and still have a comment on this page, they'd create their own blog entry, and "trackback" to this one, thus inserting the link between the two. Then readers of this post would see the comment, with the link to the full article, and be able to leave this blog and go to that one.

Makes sense, and I can see the usefulness, but there are a few flaws.

There's no requirement for the other blog post to have a reference to this blog post. This reduces the ability to determine if the post is legitimate. Further, the trackback mechanism for this software doesn't even check to see if the trackback URL is real! Of course it does the SPAMers no good to put a URL that is not real, but this allows the abusers to put any URL in the trackback submission, not just links to other blogs, which is the believed intent.

For now I've suspended trackbacks on this blog. This makes me a little unhappy as I even used the mechanism to link my own entries to each other. There does have to be another way, 'cause this whole linking thing is how the web works...