Comment spam — also known as link spam or blog spam — is the practice of posting hundreds and hundreds of “junk” comments to weblogs, with links in those comments to a web site selling some kind of product or service. Like e-mail spamming, the goal is to get free advertising and draw people to your web site. Unlike e-mail spam, no SMTP access is required. The subject matter and content of comment spam is similar to that of e-mail spam.

The complaint I made in this post was that a large amount of spam was showing up on my weblog that linked back to pages hosted at ya.com or atspace.com. This type of network abuse is probably more difficult to detect and prevent than e-mail spamming, but I strongly recommend that the Atspace support staff educate itself about this new menace.

For more information about comment spamming I recommend the following reading: The Register’s “Interview with a Link Spammer,” the “Link Spam” entry on Wikipedia, and the “Six Apart Guide to Combating Comment Spam” (from the company that makes Movable Type).

I don’t mind linking to the home pages of the hosting companies, since I suspect that they’re legit but lax in enforcing their security policies. I can’t be sure, however, so I’m also using “nofollow”.