Unfortunately, the economics of using EC2 for spammy practices works just as well as using EC2 for legit operations. Since they can rent servers by the hour, then shut them down and get new IPs on restart, it’s kind of a known problem for Amazon. If you send an email to the AWS team, they might be able to detect and block the AWS account being used.

I know that some people use EC2 for this - but, the problem is actually with Amazon Mechanical Turk. This allows real people to enter relevant comments (with ads infused). They actually get paid to do this. Mechanical Turk is a good concept (having a huge workforce that can perform specific tasks), but lately it has been used for things like this.

Just curious as to why the IP address matters to you if the comment was on topic and sincere? I appreciate comments from people who read my site, humble as it may be. I get lots of obvious spam that’s easy enough to detect and delete. I surf a lot of sites and often learn from my short visits - and sometimes like to leave an encouraging comment rather than just lurking.
No offense intended but curious as to why this is an issue and if you have good reason perhaps I should adapt your policy at my site?

They are probably using one of those services that keeps your own IP address private

Is the IP address that important? I mean, if someone leaves a great comment about something you have done, what does it matter what their IP address is? I would think the comment would be the most important thing but what do I know apparently.

@adam The IP doesn’t matter, I just thought it strange that I was getting a comment from what should be a server.

@Nikki If they are I then it would be a proxy running in the cloud and I think that is a TOS violation.

@Kendall Sue no the IP address doesn’t matter… of course you are one of the spammers AGAIN!