Hacked off with Hackers

I think I've been pretty lucky so far in blogland. Most of the people visiting to check out my chatty chat are genuine readers, those who are interested in what I have to say, or at the very least, who want to know what will be happening next to my characters. But there are a growing number of comments from clearly less well intentioned types.
To start with I replied to some of these smartly messaged comments. They sounded pretty legit, things like
"I am really enjoying the theme/design of your website. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A number of my blog readers have complained about my website not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome. Do you have any tips to help fix this issue?" Or even more perfectly tailored to get me interested "Amazing blog! Do you have any tips and hints for aspiring writers? I'm hoping to start my own website soon but I'm a little lost on everything. Would you recommend starting with a free platform like Wordpress or go for a paid option? There are so many choices out there that I'm completely confused .. Any suggestions? Bless you!"
Sound pretty on topic don't you think? As one so new to the world of romance writing, I want to both encourage readers and writers to interact with me, and I love chatting via comments on other blogs and twitter. But with the links to these commentators own blogs consistently for shoes, website sales tools or just plain gobbledegook, I got wise pretty quick that though the comments about my writing and blogging being flawless might be flattering, they sure weren't legit.
Now, I don't want to discourage people from stopping by here, so I haven't turned up my security settings full blast. But I have made it a touch harder for a non human to bombard me with notes on nothing. If you're a real commenter, I apologize if that makes things take slightly longer, but I'm hoping that a wee burst of this and things will settle down again. Maybe I'll drop off that spam alert database in the sky, or at least, things will go back to a manageble level.
In the mean time, let me know how you deal with spam, on blogs or otherwise. And as always, happy reading!
xMichele

Image from http://www.freedigitalphotos.net