Rise of Spam-Commenters?

As I’ve been a forum moderator in the past, I can say that I’ve had to put up with lots and lots of spammers.  They were a real pain in the ass, and we pretty much hated their guts.  They – the spammers – even pushed us as far that we disallowed all @mail.ru e-mail adresses. 

Spambots, however, aren’t restricted to forums.  As I’ve started to take blogging serious I’ve seem my share of WordPress spammers as well.  They’ll post tons of links and most of them (I’d say, 99%) are caught by the spam filters.  It got so bad that one of my blog gets over 500 spam comments A DAY.  And I’m not even using that blog…

Lately, however, I’ve noticed another kind of “spam” in the WordPress comments.  Users will leave a comment, and at first you might think it’s an actual comment.  Until you realize that the comment is either a random compliment or not at all related to the blog post they’re left on.  That’s when I saw that all of these “spammers” had filled in their “Website”.  This creates extra links to their website; which could generate extra traffic. 

I’m pretty sure that that’s the only reason why they’re leaving those comments.  And again, I’m starting to see a trend.  Almost every single one of them uses a generic Gmail adres.  Because, who in his right mind, would block comments from users with a Gmail adress? I certainly wouldn’t, as I use Gmail myself. 

Do you think I’m on to something, or just seeing ghosts?

[I realize it’s pretty ironic when a “Spam-Commenter” would reply to this post.  Because I’m a fair sport, I’ll approve all said comments on this post.]

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