If you read this blog with any regularity, and especially if you comment, you’ll know that you have to be logged in to comment. I turned this on a while ago when comment spam on the blog was ridiculous and took up too much of my time trying to clear up. Well, a short while ago I decided to turn the option off to see if the situation was any better, and all hell broke loose. So it’s back on again now.

By forcing people to log in, I’m cutting off most SPAM bots from my site: so far they’re all too stupid to register a user name on my site and post a comment. However, there is still one remaining avenue for the bots to leave spam on my site, and that’s using trackbacks.

For those who don’t know, a trackback is a special type of comment on a blog entry where you actually write a post on your own blog, but reference the original blog in your post. Your blog then sends a “trackback ping” to the blog you referenced, which usually then adds part of your entry as a comment on the referenced post. Phew. With this method, there is no real way of authenticating the ping other than by manually visiting the referring URL.

And guess what entry those SPAM bots tend to leave their false trackbacks on? This one!

Maybe I should start approving some of those SPAMs, to highlight the truly idiotic nature of the medium.