Akismet – State of Web Spam

There is a great post over on the Akismet blog talking about some of the newest trends they have noticed in web spam since 2005. Among them are Chinese wholesaler spam, human-posted spam, and malware spam. Considering the large volume of comments running through the Akisemet service, it’s always interesting to see what the trends are. I agree with them that Trackbacks and Pingbacks have been abused or used in the wrong way so much, that many large sites have abandoned using them altogether. Thankfully, Trackbacks apparently are so unpopular that many spammers have abandoned that tactic.

The one thing I’ve noticed on WPTavern.com is a large number of comments that specifically advertises the software that generated them. I’ve also noticed a large increase in the amount of human spam that is what I consider border line legitimate. I’ve even approved one or two by mistake. However, the most annoying aspect of spam is coming from websites that display 10 or more related posts from across the web. Some of these legitimate and illegitimate websites are showing 100 or so links generating a massive amount of pingbacks. I became a victim of a denial of service attack thanks to this method combined with a large splog network.

What are some of the specific trends you’ve noticed on your own site?