How To Stop Automatic Trackback Spam

Posted on September 24, 2007
Filed Under WordPress Plugins, WordPress Spam |

Many WP themes show trackback URL by default via code like:
<?php trackback_url(display); ?>
If you don’t want to get trackback, just remove this piece of code from the theme. However, automatic trackback spams run their scripts to get to WP directly. While deleting or hiding wp-trackback.php could solve this problem, a simple and easy way is to implement a couple of powerful plugins. Akismet, Spam Karma or Bad Behavior will do the job.

Akismet comes with WP installation, To activate Akismet, you will need to sign up for an account on Wordpress.com to get the API key that it wants you to use. You don’t have to use the wordpress.com blog, just need to sign up there to get a key.

Another plugin, Bad Behavior, is good at preventing trackback spams from ever hitting the site. Bad Behavior is able to detect and block something like 90% of spam bots. This prevents spam from ever hitting your site at all.

For what got missed by Bad Behavior, Akismet then catches the spam that does make it through. The combination of these 2 plugins work like magic. That’s all you need for stopping automatic trackback spams.

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