Banned ?

Hmm. I've used .htaccess but as a redirect, ie I'd put it on sites that host old versions of my site and redirect people to the new host - say, when the site was on geocities, in case anyone accessed the geocities address directly rather than the domain address.

I managed to mess things up once with .htaccess to the point nobody could view the host server which didn't make me very popular. I took a look at the .htaccess file on my index page but couldn't really understand what it was doing to be honest.

Code:

---

# -FrontPage-

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
AuthName [url]
AuthUserFile /home2/[username]/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd
AuthGroupFile /home2/[username]/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp

---

At the moment I just use a simple php script on the relevant page if I want to ban an IP address:

<? if(strstr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] ,"66.36.249.149")) { die("<font size=+2><b><center>Message to be displayed instead of page</font></b></center>"); }?>

Wildcard asterisks can take the place of part of the IP address, but the problem with any method is how do I go about banning whole countries?

Well banning 58., 59., 60., 61., will remove most or all of India. 196. takes out most of Nigeria, and for china and some other major spam origins, just ban 20, 21, 22, with out the dot, or use a * after each if necessary. There's also 83.229. which is satcom systems. I'm not sure of the country/countries of origin, but I'm sure that ISP a spam haven.

Sorry, let me get this right. So for instance to ban India I add four lines like the one above and when it comes to the IP address, put "58.*.*.*" then do the same thing for 59, 60 and 61?

Possibly I could look at the sitemeter too - that doesn't give me the full IP, it leaves out the last octet, but if a guestbook comment appears just after a visit from a particular IP, then it's not rocket science to put two and two together and I could asterisk out the last octet anyway.

Perhaps I'd better add an email address on the banned page - I'm rather worried half the internet won't be able to see the site after such a drastic measure.

I think just 58.* should do, for any type of string manipulation I'm aware of, but then php isn't one of the languages I studied.

Nor me :) however, what might be worth a try is looking at the sitemeter immediately I notice a guestbook spam comment and trying to get something of the IP (if I can be sure of tying it in with the time of the comment). Then I can see if it corresponds to one of the addresses you mentioned and if so, then block as you suggest.

Thanks for that - it's given me something positive to try at least.

My pleasure. I consider stomping on spammers to be nearly a sacred task. I loathe parasites.

Likewise. A forum I help admin had a real problem a while back. We got loads of users registering and posting just plain spam, usually advertising viagra or similar. The only way round it was to enable admin registration, which did stop it - but it's nicer if people are free to just register without waiting for their accounts to be officially activated.

In the end it seemed to stop of its own accord - maybe whoever was doing it finally got the message. Very annoying though and for a while it was a daily task for every admin to go into the admin panel and delete pending registrations from what were clearly spam addresses.

That does stop it but I have 30 forums, so I think I would be just approving memberships 24/7. We have a couple forums that get 100 signups a day each

Yes, the rate this spam was being registered on PCpartsreview I can appreciate that. We had several admins denying a dozen or so registrations each day for a couple of months and that was pretty hard work. We don't normally get anything like that many signups! but when we had this spam attack it was horrendous.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moira

Exactly. I also serves a purpose - that is, letting current or new members know what is and what is not an acceptable post. If a post is really out of order then the individual post can always be deleted.

---

I think that is what the AUP is all about when you sign up. There are also about half dozen docs stuck to various forums that tell you what to do and what not to do. This is where I want people to understand what to do, not from a user status display.

As for your spam issue, there are plenty of IP to region sites out there where you can get a map of what IP blocks are assigned to various countrys. I prefer to block by ISP as I find that this is much more effective because there are more problem ISPs than problem countries. Become familiar with ASN numbers and such and you can see who is responsible for making your day a painful event.

--TH13