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Fighting Trackback Spam

Written by in Blogging Sense 8 Comments

Many WordPress blogs began receiving Trackback spam today including one of my weblogs. I started receiving some jibberish trackbacks a few days ago and I figured spammers were testing out my system. I wasn’t aware that the many comment spam plugins available will not stop Trackback spam. I use Spam Karma and it’s not at all effective against this type of spam.

The best solution for right now is to disable pings for all posts. Use this query in your WordPress database

UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status = ‘closed’

This is assuming you use wp_ as your database prefix. I’m sure there will be better solutions in the form of Plugins soon but if you’re bombarded with Trackback spam this will do the trick for now.

Found via Amidst A Tangled Web.

Update: If you use Spam Karma the developer has updated the plugin to 1.15 which attempts to stop Trackback spam

Added experimental support for TrackBack spam prevention. NOTE: this new feature was added on a rush in order to plug the massive hole in all versions of WP as it stands (namely: once a spammer makes a TB spambot, he can spam you to oblivion). It has only been tested on 1.3 for now (although it should work with 1.2 fine) and, because of the way TB works, it only has a limited efficiency (hopefully, SK 2 will be much better in this area). Also, at the moment, there is no way to prevent WP from sending you email notifications for every TB sent (even when it gets deleted). Last note: make sure you enable this option (it’s disabled by default) in SK ‘Options’ panel.

Categories: Blogging Sense

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Comments

  1. Andrew K says: 1/5/2005

    Great, so now every form feedback within a blog (and even referrers) is a spam target. Just what we always wanted…

    P.S. Buy Cialis.
    hehehe.

  2. John says: 1/6/2005

    Yeah, it will always be a battle between bloggers and spammers.

    BTW, did you notice your P.S. got you put into moderation ;)

  3. dr Dave says: 1/6/2005

    Hello,

    Thanks for the link to Spam Karma, but could you possibly change the URI you are using: […]/blog/static/spam-karma is obsolete and will soon be put to retirement. The URI to use is: http://www.unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma

    Thanks!

  4. John says: 1/6/2005

    Ok, done.