I wish it was all a bad take on the classic Monty Python skit—Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am…
![[Scene from Monty Python]](http://cowpi.com/journal/media/2004/spam_monty-python.jpg "Scene from Monty Python where the only thing a restaurant serves is spam.")
I hated to do it, but because of those “evil” spammers, I had to go and close down the comments and trackbacks to old journal posts. In the future, I think I will try to keep comments open for about a month or so before they are closed. If your comment is not immediately posted, do not worry; I will still get it and post it later.
It wasn’t so much the spam within the comments, but through trackbacks that really forced the issue. Some of them have it automated, even bouncing through different proxy servers to fake their IP address. I guess I have been lucky to have missed it for so long.
This morning, I had been hit with only 50 bogus trackbacks. I was starting to get hit again this afternoon until I quickly renamed the trackback script to something benign as a stop-gap measure. Fortunately MT makes it easy to mass delete unwanted trackbacks and comments.
I installed MT-Blacklist as better defense. It stopped another 144 bogus trackbacks before I implemented another tactic. If you are running Movable Type for your weblog, I highly recommend it. It was easily to install and configure. I also followed some advice on renaming certain files.
Nothing is perfect. I expect to have problems again someday in the future. I have faith that the forces of good and light will prevail in the end.