I've had to ban blogspot from comments and pings, because I was starting to get a lot of spam with that in the URL. Apparently I wasn't alone.

About 39,000 fake blogs have been created on the web in the past two weeks, according to an analysis by Technorati, or about 4.6 percent of the 805,000 new weblogs created in that period. FightSplog, which has been monitoring new blogs at Blogspot, recently documented 2,763 porn splogs created by a single "splogger." Blogspot-based spam blogs recently began featuring names of prominent bloggers in posts, boosting the splogs' visibility in searches at web-based RSS aggregators like Feedster, PubSub and Bloglines.

It would be nice if Google would share the wealth a little:

But Google itself seems to have closed that hole, according to Jeff Jarvis, who noted that searches on Google are free from the splog listings found in identical searches on PubSub and IceRocket, among others. "Google needs to both fix Blogspot and share its secrets for ignoring blogspam," Jarvis writes.

Here's one possible solution, to at least keep it down to a dull roar by no longer allowing automated blog setups:

Suggestion, Google? As bold as this might sound, you should institute an authentication system - a captcha of sorts - for every single post that gets sent through your Blogger service. This means that there's no more easy rides for the idiots out there who are killing your baby and the blogosphere. The user logs in, enters their post, then has to jump through a captcha hoop - much like commenters have to do on Blogger.com these days. It's a simple suggestion, and one that you really, really, really, REALLY oughta consider. You were willing to go the ref="nofollow" route, why stop there?

That was a couple months ago, but I've still seen a lot of this crap when I open up the filters.

Anyway, until they wise up, friends don't let friends blog on Blogspot. Get a real domain, folks.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, here's the story at Wikipedia, with some more links.

Rand, other than this spam business using Bl0gsp0t, why else do you consider it to not be a "real" blog or a "real" domain? I've been blogging through it for quite a while now and haven't had many problems with it. It's easy to set up and use, and since it's just a hobby of mine, I don't really need a more "real" blog.

I agree that it stinks that the spam is happening through that site, but why denigrate the blogs and bloggers who use it?

I'm not "denigrating" them. I'm saying that if you don't have your own domain, you're going to have this problem, because any domain, like blog*spot.com, that allows people to set up their own subdomains on it will be hostage to spammers taking it over, and the only way to prevent the rest of us by being attacked by them is to block the entire domain.

If you want to have control over your site, you should get your own domain--it doesn't cost that much.

I really can't afford 500 bucks to get the domain robotguy.com, so I'll stick with my blog*spot blog.

Try robotguyblog.com. Only $8.95 a year. Less for multiple years.

Also, robotguy.org is available. That' what I did with Interglobal when interglobal.com was taken.

Yeah, you have to be imaginative about domain names (said the guy who had to append "-zone" onto his before finding one that was available).

And it seems that godaddy.com is offering their own blog authoring stuff along with your domain name. I might check them out.