i have NEVER had a blog that catches as much spam as the one I have through rabbit talk. It's enough to drive me away from it. I get 20-30 of them every two-three days.

Is there anything I can do to get rid of them other than black listing?
How does one get off the spammers lists?
How does one prevent new posts from getting on those lists?

I find having to go through and delete them all the time a pain. and yes, the spam filter catches them but it clogs up my inbox, I still have to go through and mark them as spam. and yes, I know in the big picture, big whoop... but it's the small details that I'm finding irritating in the short run. And yes, right now I'm REALLY tired of it... 10 came in overnight and it's like come on.....stop it already.

Is it just my blog or are other blogs dealing with the same frustration?

Hi ladysown,

I'll look into adding some countermeasures to make it more difficult for the spambots to get through. In the meantime, the single easiest way to stop them is to set your blog to only allow comments by registered RT members. Unless you have a lot of non-registered friends/family that comment on your blog, this should work quite well. There is a setting for this in your dashboard under Settings -> Discussion.

You can of course blacklist them, but it has a limited effect because most of them use proxy connections, and change their IP frequently. You can't get off their "lists" as these are, for the most part, automated scripts that just hammer any suitable webpage with a form on it that they find. Spam scripts frequently use search engines to look for sites running scripts that they can post their crap on. This means there's no hiding your blog from them fully

As I said, there are some countermeasures like Recaptcha that I can look into adding. I'll let you know of any changes.

It still mystifies me that the people who use spam actually believe it will get them more business. All it does is irritate and make people want to avoid those companies.

An awful lot of it these days has nothing to do with making sales, and more to do with distributing malware. So many of the links in spam comments and emails link to malicious sites.

That does make it even more crazy for businesses to still try to use it for more conventional purposes though.