Everyone running their blog with Movable Type should grab some of their favorite beverage and sit down for a few minutes to read the Six Apart Guide to Comment Spam. This guide was just released yesterday, and offers good background information about how comment spam is accomplished and also offers a good list of recommendations in managing comment and trackback spam. The information you’ll get out of this article is well worth the few minutes it will take to read it.
Luckily for me, I’ve been requiring TypeKey authentication ever since upgrading to Movable Type 3, which means my comment spam has pretty much been zero. Trackback spam has been a different story, however. Back in September I started seeing waves of it, getting hit several times a week. I quickly implemented MT-Blacklist as a countermeasure, and it has been quietly doing its job ever since. I’ll still get a few that slip through every so often, but it’s a lot more managable now.