Unfortunately, one of the darker sides of having a blog is spam.  My blog, which actually isn’t visited a lot by legitimate readers (says Google Analytics) is visited a lot by spammers.  People who like to comment with links to the most…exotic of sites (you’ve seen the type in your emails, I’m sure).  No, I don’t want Viagra or Cialis, or any of those.  Just stay away, please.

However, in this day in age, it is impossible to get them to leave you alone.  You can only counter the spam with technology.  That’s why I love Akismet, which, for the sake of time, is a big blacklist of known spammer IP addresses.  I employed it when I was using Movable Type.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to do as well with trackbacks as it did with comments, so that I kept having to deny those bad trackbacks.  I haven’t yet had any trackback trouble with WordPress, but the spammers have come back to haunt my comments.  So far, Akismet is capturing most of them, though one or two have slipped by.

I’m not sure what else can be done to combat these warriors of comment degradation.  I hope that technology will improve to the point where spammers have nowhere to go.  In addition to technological means, spammers could be hit with steeper fines, and tougher laws, although current attempts to do just this seem to have gone nowhere.  The battle will be difficult and will probably continue on as long as the Internet exists.  We will just have to site back and see what happens.