I just read your thoughts on spam rates and I have had the same problem this past 3-4 weeks, but heavily in the past two weeks. I called Microsoft to ask them why my spam levels were so high. I called Norton who said Norton can block spamming links but can't do anything about spam emails. Microsoft said to change my password as this is the only thing Microsoft can do. However, Microsoft also said to report any spam that concerns me as a
"phishing complaint". I changed my email and the spam dropped off dramatically. Hope this helps.

Are you including your website URL address when you add comments on other websites? If you are, I suggest you don't.

One reason is obvious. You will get spam comments. But more importantly, you may be creating backlinks to your website from sites that have no authority. That may impact your search engine ranking.