I'd thought I was safe from being 'TrackBack spammed' on this web site. I spent a lot of time disabling the TrackBacks on all my entries and deleting the spam that had accumulated. But I missed one entry. That allowed people (I use the term loosely - "vile reptilian scum" would be more appropriate.) to advertise their porn, ED snake oil and gambling websites for free by sending a TrackBack link to web sites that have nothing to do with them. This was a minor inconvenience until they used up over 200MB of bandwidth on my website in two days. I'm allowed 300Mb per month, and this put me over my limit, which if it were to continue would mean I pay more $$$.
A TrackBack entry was originally designed to allow people who read entries in blogs to make their own comments on the subject in their own blogs and link the two so that readers could read both entries. Neat idea. Except that evil reptilian scum realized quickly that they could link to their crappy websites anonymously and get free advertising. So a good idea was taken over and perverted, costing the legitimate operators money. In short, I was pissed off about it.
The blogging software developers have of course come up with fixes, but that involves upgrading the software, which is a pain and costs $$ and time. So, I've disabled all TrackBacks on my blogs (not a big loss since no one ever linked to my entries anyway), and I hope I found them all. I've been tempted to rant about these vile cretins and use symbols like #$%@. I'll just say I hope they die penniless, alone, and in excruciating pain.
The folks at my website hosting company, logjamming.com have been very helpful. I recommend them if you want to host a blog. They're inexpensive, easy-going and my site always seems to be available. They provide good customer service and are friendly. What more can you want from a service provider?
Back to studying Differential Equations, Digital Signal Processing, and other scholarly things.
Posted by Bob at January 20, 2006 10:09 AM