I’ve covered the problem of Trackback spam here before, but just wanted to bring you all up to speed on the status in case you get a Trackback blocked here and there. So here’s the deal:
Trackbacks are a problem for us – a fairly serious problem. Fortunately – or unfortunately – the spammers apparently are running their scripts in batch format, so that when we get spammed, we really get spammed. The majority of the time, however, the problem ranges from non-existent to manageable.
For the times we really get buried, I do have a plugin that will address the problem, MT-TrackbackAntiSpam. The catch is that from our experience this is an all or nothing solution, in that its seems unable to distinguish between Trackback spam and a legitimate ping. Near as I can determine (which isn’t that near since there’s no logging), it simply blocks everyone. So once I implement this, I kill the spam, but start getting emails from people that they can’t track back. In response, I turn the plugin off, and everything’s ok. For a little while. Then it all begins again.
Now as I covered before, we do use MT-Blacklist which is supposed to address this sort of problem, but for us at least it’s not working. Worse, the MT-Blacklist forum seems to not have a very active community behind it, because I’ve gotten no responses to a few queries I posted over there.
So I thought I’d post this for two reasons: a.) so that if you get a Trackback blocked, you know why (just email me and I’ll turn it off), and b.) I’m hoping that someone has a much more reasonable and sustainable long term solution to this problem.
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