I have two tools I currently use to battle trackback and comment spam on this site, they get about 85% of it but still some nasty stuff slips through. In the next couple of says I am going to install a third tool on this site to try and fight back even more.
It’s ridiculous three tools to fight trackback and comment spam. If I had any management decisions to make at SixApart this would have been a high priority. They need to quit making strategic partners and fix their tools so I don’t have to spend my VALUABLE time cleaning all this disgusting stuff up.
At least some third part developers get it. It’s too bad that SixApart keeps sticking their heads in the sand.[MT-DSBL]
Hey there Geek
I have to agree that the spam is bad. We’re all affected by it and there’s no surefire solution, especially when it comes to something like the most popular downloadable weblogging software on the web.
You see, spammers attack major weblog systems because they are predictable and the attacks can be scripted easily. It’s fairly trivial for a spammer to sit down and figure out the weak points of any open source (as in readable) code. That means that anything that we include in the main code would be routed around in less than 5 minutes.
That is why the best defense is, and always will be plugins. Through the use of plugins, each installation can be differentiated from each other just enough to make that scripting frustrating at best. When you layer on solutions, as you are doing, you create a solid, almost-unscriptable defense.
Believe me that we at Six Apart care very much about this problem and there are great things in store in many respects (not just anti-spam measures).
By the way, the “third-party developer” is actually part of the Movable Type development team and I’m the Product Manager. You may have heard of a little plugin I created?
Yeah, Six Apart is very motivated to make your life easier in terms of battling spam.
Take care!