Comment Spam

I've been writing this blog for over two years now and have never suffered from comment spam until recently. I'm not sure what has changed but I've started getting really obvious (or at least I think it is obvious) comment spam.

A person either without a public profile or who has just joined blogger will comment on two or three posts within a matter of minutes. The comments are usually only slightly related to the post and sometimes not at all. But what they all have in common is a link at the end of the post to some random web site; usually the site seems, at first glance, to be a blog or encyclopedia but when you look for more than a few seconds it is clearly trying to sell things without making it too obvious.

I was just ignoring them and hoping I wouldn't have to hurt anyone's feelings by deleting the comments but then the other day someone posted the following comment in reply to my post on Pomegranate, Cranberry and Pepper Jelly:

Credit unions are recognized as a force for positive economic and social change and have provided significant social and economic value in both developed and emerging nations. International Credit Union Day is sponsored by World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU), the international trade association and development organization for credit unions, and Credit Union National Association (CUNA), the premier trade association for America’s credit unions.

Now that is definitely spam -- there is no way in which it is related to the post and it is definitely unwanted. So that was the final straw, anything that looks like comment spam will now be deleted as soon as I see it. I'm not going to turn comment moderation on yet as hopefully I'll be able to spot and delete them quite quickly.

If you are reading this and have one of your comments deleted then either a) it was spam please don't do it again or b) I deleted it be mistake whilst annoyed at some other spam, sorry!