Blog Spamming - It's nothing New!
Does your blog get hit by tons of comment spam or Sping like I receive on a daily basis? If you answered no or I am not sure, then it's just a matter of time! As I write this and by the time I post this message, I will probably receive anywhere between 5 and 10 junk comments that will need to be deleted. Here is even a more staggering figure for you. As of November 11, 2006 I have received 771 'junk' trackbacks to just one of my accounts on MovableType.
Blogging has became so big - so quickly (and is still growing by leaps and bounds) it is no wonder is has become such an easy target for spammers. The two main forms of blog spamming is comment spam and trackback spam (also know as Sping). If you have the option of approving all comments before they get posted please by all means do so. It is a much better option then just letting any comment be posted that will more than likely include bogus comments with hyperlinks.
The majority of spam is actually automated and there are two fairly well known methods that should help limit or eliminate any spam. Both of these methods have been in use for awhile now. They are the turing test or CAPTCHA (which requires the user to type in a graphic representation of alphanumeric characters) and then there is the "no-follow" attribute which tells the search engines not to index the link.
I hope this sheds some light on the whole blog spamming issue. And by the way I only had 2 junk comments during the writing of this. Maybe I am getting faster at typing or maybe it's because I have been using the 'ban' commenter feature!