Sorry, Blogspotters, but for now I'm going to have to ban any URL from blogspot.com, until they can get the spam situation under control. I've gotten dozens of comment spams today from various blogspot sites advertising poker, car rentals, golf equipment, etc. I've notified blogspot, and forwarded them the spam for each suspect subdomain, but have received no response from them. I don't have time to fend off these attacks, which come from different IPs each time.

If I were a Blogspot user, I'd be pressuring them to do something about these spam sites, because it's only going to punish the legitimate users as more of us are forced to take the same drastic action that I have today.

[Update at 3:30 PM EST]

This is going to be a tough problem for them to solve. The deal is that these scumbags are going in, setting up a blogspot blog with a bunch of nonsense text full of keywords, and the link to the real spammer site. I looked at a couple of the ones that hit me today, and they'd been set up today, with a single blog post. Once set up, they obviously go out and start spamming blogs like mine.

I don't know how it would be possible for blogspot to do anything about these cretins preemptively, except to institute more stringent registration procedures.

Did you hit the "Flag this Blog" button at the top of the blog? That's what it's for. The community has to do a little self-policing while Blogger tries to find a technical fix.

No, I didn't know it was there. I don't like to even visit the things and give them traffic.

The "Flag?" button is at the top right of each blog5pot blog. Hmm - I have a blog5pot blog; I wonder if this comment will go through...
(update - nope, I had to leave my URL off and be all h4>

that last word is h4x0r.

I should point out that A Voyage to Arcturus, Space Pragmatism, Curmudgeon's Corner, Astroblog, Robot Guy, The Eternal Golden Braid, Back Off Government, Hypotheses Non Fingo, Selenian Boondocks, Rocket Dungeon, NYC Nova Hunter, Space For Commerce, Space Tramp, The Meridiani Journal, Space Law Probe, Fly Me to the Moon, Top of the Lawn, Deep Space Bombardment, Apollo Space and Science, How I Am Becoming An Astronaut, Ambivalent Engineer, and Tales of the Heliosphere are all space blogs on Blogger. It would be a pity if none of those blogs could leave a link back to their own in the comments here.

It is very frustrating, but I don't know what to do about it. I was getting dozens of these things yesterday, and spending much of my time deleting them. Just one more reason for serious bloggers to get their own domains.

Word Verification worked for me. I'm at Brickmuppet Blog, which is also a (SPEAK NOT ITS NAME) blog. I got NO comment spam after switching it on, which suprised me.

These buttweasels are using robots and I imagine that they get paid by the hit, so this does seem to be tripping them up, at least for now.