Trackback Spam Resources

Here’s a slightly edited version of the message I sent to wp-hackers today:

The first public version (v0.5) of the WP Trackback Validator is now available from the following URL:

http://idli.cs.rice.edu/~dsandler/trackback/trackback-validator-plugin/

The idea behind the Validator, which is under development by students in the Rice University Computer Security Lab, is simple: Trackback URLs that point to pages that don’t link back to your blog are bogus. It’s an easy test to perform, and one that no current Trackback spammer is bothering to try to defeat; since we’ve started using this plugin on our personal WP blogs, our Trackback spam rate has dropped to zero.

This test is already present in some other anti-spam plugins, typically included among a hodgepodge of other content-based schemes and rules. If you’re looking for something lightweight that does one job extremely well, please check out the Validator.

The point of the project, in addition to helping to combat Trackback spam, is to collect data. We’re interested in the kinds of spams people get, from which sources, at what rate, etc. We’d like to see if, once everyone starts applying the simple reverse-link check, the spammers step up their assault. In order to help us, the Validator distribution comes with a small shell script which will send us a profile of the spam you’ve caught recently.

So, in short, to save Trackback from an untimely death, try out the Trackback Validator plugin, and send us back some data. In the meantime, enjoy spam-free Trackbacks on your WordPress site.

Nice writeup of the current trends in spam blogs and RSS content theft.

The last six months has seen a massive rise in content theft blogs and spam blogs, and there’s one thing these blogs usually have in common, and that’s the whole “Blog and Ping” thing … Blog and Ping is a online marketing term applied to a system that utilizes blogs and pings (short for pingback) to deliver content and/ or sites for indexing in search engines with the ultimate aim of profit.

[...]

Already some in the SEO industry are saying that Blog and Ping is dead due to the massive increase in users, content theft sites and spam blogs. If you’re getting any benefit out of Blog and Ping now, you won’t be for much longer because already some search engines are talking about excluding your sites.