I hate trackback spam!

Checking our web space I had to discover that we went low on space due to such a dull thing as trackback spam. Is there a way to get away without being spammed, or do we have to accept a certain level of spam?

Suddenly - in a phase when I did not publish anything on our pages - disk usage of the site went up to its limits. After logging in it became clear that my four blog entries got thousands of trackbacks.

If anyone needed some biology lessons or medicine or poker experience: The trackbacks could have provided useful information...

Fortunately trackbacks have to be acknowledged on this system and even more fortunately they can be disabled completely. Maybe at some time I will connect to a spam filter for comments / trackbacks, but probably this is not worth the trouble and I just keep them turned off.

Spam is really the plague of the internet. But when you really think about it, it may just be the other side of the coin of the well appreciated freedom and partial anonymity of the internet. How could you stop spam other than by introducing strict control and accountability of every step an individual makes in the internet - big brother would be watching us.

Probably we have to roll out our own web of trust (again) to get the most important information through the net without delay while maintaining free communication with people neither known nor recommended to us, yet, and live with lots of spam in exchange for the freedom of not having to sign every packet of information with a key assigned to us by Mr. Schäuble (our equivalent of a Secretary of Homeland Security).