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February 14, 2005
Advertizing By Trackbacks?
There was a trackback made to an entry I had written long ago called Tasty Umbrellas . When I went to look at who had trackbacked to me I went to this Texas Hold'em site. It had NOTHING to do with umbrellas or tastiness. It was telling me to download this game and play it online. Robots are using trackbacks to advertise. I bet it is fake too. Dad, or Uncle Ted, you could probably figure it out. Dad, you might need a password to stop the trackbacks. I am wondering why it chose a posting from so long ago?
Posted by Kelly at February 14, 2005 03:30 PM
Comments
I have been getting these too. I would *not* link to them or visit their site. I don't know if trackbacks can be password protected but you can leave them off of your template since not many people use them anyway. I have just been going in and deleting them as they show up. So far it hasn't been a big problem, but it could get worse.
Posted by: UT at February 14, 2005 04:01 PM
You are correct, Kelly. The spammers have created robots that look for open trackback links, especially since the blog systems have tackled comment spam.
We should use trackbacks more, because it is a way to post a long comment in your blog (where you have more control.) But I don't think people readily understand how they work.
We cannot put a password exactly, because trackbacks are automatic posts. Ted is right, though, you can turn them off by default. You have to go close old ones. (I may be able to do this for everyone.) I plan on putting in a fix, though, so you can wait for that.
Posted by: Jeb at February 14, 2005 05:46 PM