I received the following attempt to comment spam this blog today:
Author : galinagirll (IP: 72.9.235.218 , server6.barronhosting.com)
E-mail : tesrghft8077@inbox.ru
URI : http://love.com
Comment:
hello , you have a very nice site, but Im hired to leave advertising comments on sites, sorry i hate to do it but i have to . If you dont like advertising comments please send me an email with your site address to tedirectory(at)yahoo(dot)com and I will not write on your site. Sorry for inconvenience.
The URI link, love.com, returns this WhoIs info:
Domain Name: love.com
Registrant:
AOL LLC
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
US
The domain redirects to AOL personals so, the polite comment spammer sure seems to be working for AOL. Is AOL really stooping this low, hiring spammers to get better Google rankings?
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 
B4B gets 200-600 comment spam per day now. After six months the amount of spam has passed the amount of legitimate comments today.
“Nice site” and “sorry” and “please do not hold a harm” show up a lot. I don’t care how “polite” they act. Spammers should be killed.
I think it’s time the death penalty was instituted for spam.
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I received one of those myself … or rather, an offer to get their friends to stop spamming me if I’d be so kind as to link to them. Like you, the IP log showed IP: 72.9.235.218 , server6.barronhosting.com and asked me to contact them at the yahoo addy.
This isn’t AOL at work, this is whoever is at the yahoo address and working out of barronhosting. I’m about to fire off a note to abuse@ both of those.
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I suppose the spammer could have had other reasons for trying to promote an AOL owned and operated web site via spamming. However considering AOL’s past stupid actions (e.g. massive bulk junk mailings of CD’s) I would not be surprised if AOL either intentionally or accidentally hired a blog spammer as a method of marketing. FWIW: I have not received any further spam promoting AOL sites.
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