banning entire countries

[galahad]

I would like to be able to ban all signups from China, Bangladesh, and a couple of other countries.  It would be fantastic to have a routine that would check the IP location and just do it.  I don't have a single member from those countries and have multiple attempts daily from spammers.  Because it is remotely possible that a real person might want to join the boards it would be fantastic to have an exception routine so that if a real person were to send an e-mail to one of the moderators they could allow an exception.

[Kindred]

you can already do this.   Find the general IP range of the services in that country and ban those IP ranges, using x.x.*.* format

[galahad]

Please understand that I'm a complete novice so am fumbling around with this.  But when I go to this site:  http://www.wizcrafts.net/chinese-iptables-blocklist.html  there doesn't seem to be a "general IP range."  And the addresses for other "offending" countries would be just as difficult to enter.

Is there a way to do a "copy/paste" to insert the addresses into the ban section?

[NanoSector]

Forum Firewall can do this, search it on the mod site.

[青山 素子]

Note that banning whole countries by IP is a bit difficult as the online lists aren't 100% accurate and you're likely to ban parts of other countries due to the way IP allocation works.

[galahad]

Thanks to everyone for their advice and help.  I've contacted Wiz Feinberg and I think we'll get this worked out pretty quickly. 

So I guess my suggestion/request might be modified to something like:

I'd like to see a mod that can be easily loaded onto my site that allows the Wizcrafts IP data to be used to block IP addresses automatically.

THANKS AGAIN!!

[PopUpSteve]

Try using a combination of whatismyipaddress.com and stopforumspam.com to locate the countries you wish to ban.

[Kindred]

egads, NO! !!!

if you submit country IPs to stopforumspam, the entire country will be marked as spam for everyone!
Stopforumspam, unfortunately, has no oversight on submitting IPs

[青山 素子]

Stopforumspam, unfortunately, has no oversight on submitting IPs

That makes it worse than useless as a service, despite a lot of people recommending it. It's too easy to ban real people if you use a bad source.

[Wizzlefits]

You can't submit wildcard ips to stop forum spam. They require username, email, ip for each submission.
Still not sure why/how you would use them for county blocking. Checking to see if a certain member has been spamming... okay.

[busterone]

Seconded on that. You cannot wildcard submit ranges to Stop Forum Spam.  As Wizzle said, a submission requires all three- Username, email, and IP.   The api plugin for SMF does not automatically reject anyone either. If 2 of the 3 criteria match a listing, then that registration is placed in a awaiting admin approval queue. It is up to the admin to go to SFS and look at the data to determine if it is a spammer with several hundred reports in the last month, or if it was one or two reports 6 months ago, possibly a false positive. Wisdom and good judgement is a necessity to use the service as it is intended. 
Sorry, I got off topic a bit
SFS also cannot be used in the manner that the OP was asking for either.  Entire country ranges are not blocked there and never will be.

[Vince S]

Say I just noticed this topic. Banning entire countries, or big sub-sets of them, from registering has been the least painful, but still problematic approach I could find to this whole SPAM issue. The details are here http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=433172.msg3042424#msg3042424

I like what is suggested by the OP of a mod to link to a database controlled country register, but the quoted one (http://www.wizcrafts.net/lacnic-iptables-blocklist.html) looks like it is only a partial answer given that my experience has been spammers originate from a much wider base. There are bound to be freebies of these around somewhere because spam is such a big issue, but I am currently in knee-jerk path of least resistance mode. The tricky thing with IP's is the roosters that allocate them have been allowing narrow slots in IP ranges to go to wildly different countries, sometimes including your own. Plus IPv6 is coming and that will undoubtedly turn the whole thing on its head!

The trick is to ban registration, not total as there is a lot of good info that real people in other countries are fine to look at. I think they get a blank screen if it is a total ban on IP, at least someone who went o/s said this when I was doing full bans before changing to rego only.

This might be the answer the OP was originally looking for and maybe better than the one they found, but it is still only a half-arsed solution to a tricky but important problem. Which, just to clarify, I think has a really strong basis to be included as a base feature once 2.0 gets over the line for Gold!

[Kindred]

Well, I have accomplished minimal to no spam on two forums without resorting to banning entire countries

[Vince S]

I guess the real point, given that this is a "feature request" thread, is that spam management is not easy, it is important, and the tools that are built in are really blunt. The OP suggested one particular solution that I personally find works well with not much hassle. If there is a better (still easy) way I don't know what it is, which could be about me of course!

If there is to be true value in running a topic that gravitates to an action plan it is to discuss the bits and pieces of the feature's details, then get it into the development "to do" list, or not. Statements about the relative ability of more or less seasoned users to adapt the existing system are not advancing the process unless there is solid content leading to decisions, don't you think? Most of us ham fisted forum operators out here in the real world are happy to give our time to whatever our particular bent is, and it is really cool to have others providing the tools they do like this fabulous SMF system, but we shouldn't confuse that with the realities of using it as it currently stands and spam is a biggie to make easier to deal with. OK? Or am I talking in riddles?

[Kindred]

Sorry... I actually have no idea what you just said.

The original post/request is not reasonable to include as a feature. Banning entire countries or even lae blocks of ip addresses is not something we wish to encourage (and it is, in the end, more or less pointless)

If you are concerned with anti spam, then there are three mods which basically do everything that is really needed. Honeypot, stopforumspam, and possibly the firewall mod.
SMF already has captcha and human questions.

[TurtleKicker]

SMF already has captcha and human questions.

These are no longer sufficient. Most of my spam accounts are no longer from "bots", but are instead human sign-ups done by actual people in obscure foreign countries getting paid pennies a day for the job (which is a fortune to them). It's safe to say I'll never get a single legit sign-up from any of these countries. However, being able to block by country would go a long way to reducing my current forum spam amount by at least 99% (not a made-up number) while simultaneously eliminating a lot of manual labor on my part.

I would find the feature asked for in the OP immensely useful.

[Illori]

then the questions you have asked are not strong enough, they work just fine on my forum

[Kindred]

yup, captcha and questions will not stop a human spammer. True.

However... since adding SFS and Honeypot, even my human spammers have dropped to one per month, or less.

[Ozzie]

could not resist posting this

[butchs]

Country blocks are best done before reaching the forum.  htaccess and other methods are well suited.  There are several lists available.  A mod should only be used to block lower threats.