As you can see from the sidebar, my comments boxes have been extensively spammed, I assume by some sort of spambot. This could really be a threat to blogging – is anyone aware of countermeasures?
Meanwhile, please post lots of comments on different topics, to push this lowlife off my page and save me the trouble of deleting him manually.
John Quiggin 
If the messages are all coming from the same IP, you can set Movable Type to ban anyone using that IP from commenting or trackbacking. Otherwise, I fear manual deletion is the only way around it.
Thanks, I’ve done this now. Let’s hope this isn’t the first of many.
There are some counterneasures on this page.
I haven’t actually tried them, but I guess I will have to soon.
Darn. I came over here to see if you wanted some Viagra, but it looks like you’re not interested. You wouldn’t happen to need your mortgage refinanced, would you?
It would be interesting to see a comparison of what other worthwhile social projects we could have accomplished with the money and person-hours that have been invested in anti-spam measures. That way we could tell MIRIAM ABACHA that if it weren’t for her confidential business transactions, we would have found a cure for AIDS by now.
To take that utility argument a step further, how about a military style hit on spam sources. I saw that someone has figured that about 30 individuals are responsible for over 95% of the world’s spam. Not sure if someone has done an accurate economic cost analysis but laser-guided missiles at $50-100k look like good value and would have a strong disincentive effect.
Tim Dunlop is collecting spammenter IPs here, if you want to pre-emptively ban the buggers.