I am having problems with trackback spammers. Most seem to come from besturlsite.info, though some are for "cheap phentermine".
I found and followed instructions for shutting off trackbacks by installing an anti-spam plug-in. But that completely killed my ability to post to my blog or for others to post comments. It turns out there were firewall issues with my ISP.
I am an Aplus.net customer. The Serendipity blog is one of the "accessories" they offer with their ecommerce service. They are a very good service with very good security and technical support. They spent a lot of time figuring it out and they do not intend to open their firewall to make this work. So I had to remove the anti-spam plug-in.
I found and followed some other instructions that were supposed to prevent me from seeing trackbacks. I must admit that blog jargon is foreign to me so I do not entirely understand the function or mechanism of trackbacks, so I do not know why it is useful to me to do this, but no matter - it didn't work, either.
So is there any way to totally expunge trackbacks from my blog. I'm not a member of the blogosphere or anything. I don't care if anyone links to me or not. I am just trying to use this blog software as a very quick way to post small tidbits without having to code the html, invent a file name, modify other files to link to my new information, upload them, test them, etc. I know how to make real pages and I do it all the time. But with the blog I can take a picture and five minutes later have it posted with some comments. Or I can write a whole diatribe, including photos, links, etc. and as soon as I am done writing, BAM!, it is posted. No muss, no fuss, very convenient. Or it would be if I didn't have to keep deleting all of these spam trackbacks. I haven't seen a single legitimate trackback, just dozens of spammers each day.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer!
(Also, if there is a plain English explanation of what is a trackback and why would I want one, please point me to it.
--Brian