Just in case you’re using WordPress, the most successful combination I’ve found so far to Kill Spam Dead (in regard to Comment and Trackback spam) is this:
AuthImage for Comment Spam; I have had no problems with this. No comment spam has made it through since I implemented this. Yay.

Go here for trackback spam. It works. I started getting my first vomit-like chunks of trackback-spam today and I tried a few fixes. This is the only one that worked.

Today I doubled the RAM in my laptop. Glory be. I was getting completely clagged. What I really need is a bigger hard drive, but with some selective culling and my new half gig of RAM, everything is a little more zippy. Thank you ebay: I still can’t get over how cheap memory is, compared to how much it used to be. I got 256 meg of laptop RAM for $55, which isn’t bad at all. Also, my new USB hub arrived yesterday (thanks ebay – free postage to Australia) and only cost $14AU. It is totally worth it – I spent so much of my time swapping my printer plug, burner plug, palm pilot plug and mouse plug – not to mention my camera plug…the hub holds four USB 2.0 inputs – and I’m happy. Woo!

Every time I upgrade WordPress (the system that makes this whole thing run) something goes awry. And then I spend late nights getting few responses to my pleas on the help forums and nutting away at it myself. So. Comments are now working – if someone (besides myself) could leave a comment for me to make sure it works for people who aren’t me, that would be appreciated. If this is incoherent it’s because my eyes are so baggy I can’t see what I’m typing. Ack.

I have to report that I think I’ve finally (touch wood) got a handle on the comment spam. It is all due to the very awesome Spam Karma plugin for WordPress. Since I installed it a week ago (and removed those word-picture things that were so annoying) Spam Karma informs me it has eaten 641 809 bits of spam – and it’s still hungry. Fifty-eight IP addresses have been permanently banned from posting and are now members of the ‘Bad Guys Hall of Shame’. Nah nah nah nah-nah.