Sam’s Spam

I just got swamped by about 150 bits of trackback spam. Not a problem – I know how to deal with it and I was able to get rid of it all in line of SQL code… and it was also interesting to see that I rank highly enough in common searches to find ‘open’ blogs that I was swamped by so much of it, so quickly.

I’ve been spam-free for months, since I implemented my solution to blog spam, which (as you’ve probably seen) involves answering simple (to a human) questions when you place a comment. But this most recent horde of spam worked by using trackback, a system whereby weblogs tell each other if people write relevant “follow-up” content. And, unlike the comments-spam, which I was able to easily prevent, trackback spam is more difficult, and I’m yet to devise a suitable solution (although I have a clever idea).

I wonder if it was the man interviewed by The Register yesterday who was responsible for this attack?