Jonathan, regarding Track-back spam. You might want to check out the scam I wrote about back in January. Its rather interesting.
Here is the Link.

I would not worry about “Gray Ghost”, as he does not have enough class to even use his real name.

Only someone without integrity would fail to understand the point, label it jealousy and/or flagrantly flaunt their nepharious ways.

Sadly, that lack is supported by merchants, managers and network representatives who refuse to implement policies that would stop or deter even the most obvious affiliate liars, cheats and thieves.

For example, when I discover that one of my affiliate sites has been copied with only the affiliate links changed, I’ll report the infringement with all the necessary supporting data to the appropriate affiliate manager(s) and the network, if applicable.

Sometimes the managers respond favorably and terminate the affiliation, however, more often than not they don’t respond at all.

The most frustrating reply came from a network representative who basically said that copyright infringement didn’t contravene their terms of agreement.

Go figure.

If an affiliate can blatantly and publicly rip off another affiliate with impunity, we have little hope for action from account reps when the thief is more savvy or subtle.

Although I still regularly report evil affiliates, I rely primarily on karma to deal with them appropriately – not the managers.

Stop hatin’ – your just jealous that they’re making the big money.

Do you really believe what you’re saying?

I’ve been managing affiliate programs for a decade, and for most of that time, I’ve been making it a habit to monitor the latest scams.

Trust me – I know very well how to cheat.

I don’t do it by choice, because I have integrity.

I was actually interested in what it could do.

Then, I found out that what they were advertising their product could do is generate trackbacks to you, making it look like you had written about someone else’s blog, without you ever writing anything about their site.

On the call, the direct quote from this scam artist was “So you will want to find the less-savvy blog owners who won’t come to your site…” to make sure that you’ve actually written something about them.

Why would someone create junk?

Oh yah… in search of the almighty dollar.

Well, on the plus side, it does make it easier to stand out as a person who is doing good things, yes?

Thanks for commenting on this Shawn. As always, timely and insightful.