SPAM trackbacks -- and escapism . . .

I can't imagine why anyone -- even a spammer -- would do something like this, but I've been getting hundreds of spam trackbacks. It's bizarre, and there's no way to stop it. I guess that means I'll be missing legitimate trackbacks, because I won't be able to see them. It's sad that the biggest threat to blogs is the relentless spamming. You get the spam comments under control, and they use trackbacks. Why anyone would read a trackback and then go to a commercial site is beyond me, but I don't think the spammers are really interested in money or customers; at this point in their sleazy evolution they just want to be able to say they took a shit on your lawn.

What a drag.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, despite these and other (mostly computer related) annoyances it's all nothing compared to the East Coast with the snow. I feel like a total escapist, and I suspect Puff does too.

To give you an idea of how wonderful it is, here are a couple of views of the San Francisco Bay, taken at the Albany waterfront with my cellphone, at sunset yesterday:

albany13.jpeg

albany12.jpeg

The Albany Waterfront Park sprawls for miles, with paths and overgrown brush, and it's right next to civilization, which makes its desolate nature even more appealing. Art has been made from the disintegrating junk lying about. One of Puff's favorite haunts. (And mine.)

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that plain old fraud is also infecting the blogosphere, and obviously there's nothing at all to stop some sickening SPAM site from rigging up a Movable Type "blog" to spread blog pestilence, disease, and infection while posing as a blogger.

Once again, crucifixion is too good for them.

posted by Eric on 01.22.05 at 10:14 PM





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Comments

The reason why spammers are using trackbacks is because Google tracks them when ranking pages. Google is fighting back, however:

http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

"From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists."

Movable type (http://www.sixapart.com/) is following google's lead. Details at http://www.movabletype.org/news/2005/01/movable_type_nofollow_p.shtml

Bill Peschel   ·  January 23, 2005 08:36 PM

You've got a small HTML typo in the last couple lines. I think there's a stray quote or angle bracket or something, but all I can see is "MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that plain old fraud is also
Once again, crucifixion is too good for them."

Aaron Davies   ·  January 24, 2005 09:48 PM

So now I have to worry about trackback spam? Great.

Alexa   ·  January 25, 2005 12:52 AM


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