Spam comments issue resolved

You may have noticed an increase in spam comments appearing across the site recently. We’re glad to confirm this has now been fixed.

After digging into the issue, we traced the problem back to our spam filtering service. The configuration hadn’t been set up correctly, which meant the filter was being bypassed entirely in certain cases. In practice, this allowed some users to post comments without going through the verification check that’s supposed to catch this kind of activity.

We raised a ticket with the provider as soon as we identified the cause, and between their support and our own checks, we’ve now got the configuration corrected.

• The verification check is back in place and working as intended
• Spam filtering is now correctly enforcing the rules it should have been applying all along
• We’ve reviewed recent comments and removed the spam that slipped through during the affected period

We’ll be keeping a closer eye on the filter’s behaviour over the next little while to make sure everything stays as it should. If you spot anything that looks like spam, please flag it to us so we can take a look. Thanks for your patience while we got this sorted.