For those of you who do not know understand trackbacks (ie. blogspot headz, heh), let me give you a quick definition.
Trackbacks were designed to extend the conversation and connect bloggers of similar thought. In other words, Tseng of Mainland China could virtually provide accolades or disparage a blog entry from Billy of Peoria. When I first learned of the power of this technology, I was instantly hooked. You could essentially help syndicate and validate the work of a fellow blogger. The absolute form of street cred on the blogosphere.
Of late, it appears that comment/trackback spam terrorists have taken a bite out of many blogs. I too was a victim roughly one year ago. However I took very aggressive measures, nearly to the detriment of my admittedly minimal readership. In retrospect, I'm glad that I took a ruthless and gestapo stance against the crap. These days, I receive zero spam. Well, actually yesterday I received nine erroneus msgs that never touched my blog. Actually, this was the first bit of junk that I've rec'd in probably 9-10 months. It was due to an executable script that I left on my server. The problem has since been resolved.
Let me run down some of the basics for those of you who use MT.
1) Security by obscurity - (aka change name of mt-comments.cgi)
2) Upgrade to latest MT 3.x engine
3) Utilize Spamlookup which deploys a RSBL
4) Grab a copy of Chad Everett's MT-Approval
5) Read Elise Bauer's article for dealing with spam on your MT blog.
Following these steps will mitigate any spam threat.
