In the last four days, I’ve received eight advertising messages that are directed through the trackback system from the newsletter. Can the trackback system be turned off or filtered to prevent this?

- Dalyce

My apologies. I was experimenting with the comments and trackbacks. I’ve disabled them all, but I can’t think of why you would be getting emails. Oh - maybe because you are the author of some articles and if someone does a trackback, you get notified. Anyway, I’ve disabled them. I’m sorry about that!

Theresa

Theresa, I’m sure it has nothing to do with your experimenting! These are ads, mainly from casinos, and included are either direct links to whatever site is advertising, or links to google groups. Here are the entry titles:

- geico motorcycle insurance
- casino online casinò con bonus
- building insurance
- desert dollar casino
- insurance rate
- online casin+¦
- gamble casino
- online hasardspel betting

I don’t understand the technology, but it seems they’ve managed to find my newsletter editor e-mail (which I thought I’d disabled) through the trackback function, and are sending spam through it. Nothing you did, I’m certain…

Ok, I’ve disabled everything (and Tony can do the trackbacks and comments in a more controlled manner) but let me know if you continue to get them and I will investigate further. I’ve been getting them, too, for other weblogs. They should stop now, I hope…

P.S. If you edit your profile, you can take away the ” - Newsletter Editor” title from your Display Name, if you want!

Thanks, Theresa…I was sure I wasn’t the only one getting them…

We’ve always allowed trackbacks and comments; Theresa only experimented with emailing the author of the original posts. Dalyce, consider yourself lucky. She set my gmail account as the address to send ALL trackbacks and comments! So I was receiving emails for trackbacks to the posts I authored AND those I didn’t. Somehow our domain is on a spammer hit list and I really don’t know how to stop them from linking to us. I only know how to enforce moderation before they can appear, or remove that feature entirely.

On the plus side, if anyone posts a blog entry that links to our pages, we’ll hear about it. On the down side, we get, well, what we’ve been getting.

I’m open to suggestions.