[theforum] evolt users

[Dean Mah]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 4:44 PM, Eduardo Kienetz <eduardok at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Dean Mah <dean.mah at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> One of the reasons that we keep all of the users is to "block" the
>> spammers.  Marking them with the role of 'Spamming Scum' disables them
>> from re-creating a deleted account.  Not that it makes much of a
>> difference since there's no impediment to adding new accounts (we
>> don't use captcha or e-mail verification).
>
>
> What I've been doing with quite some success is to collect IP address of
> spammers, then from the stats (most used IPs) I block the whole netblock
> (through htaccess), as they are usually from China anyway...
> When I have access to iptables, I have a php that creates the rules then I
> just paste to a .sh file and make sure it's run appropriately.

Currently, the most popular are the Indian spammers.  But we get
spammers from all over, including North American, so blocking complete
netblocks isn't usually feasible.  As well, I usually hate to block
everyone.  At a deep down level it strikes me as wrong.  Plus, I go to
China sometimes and it's nice to be able to get at the site.

However, there are scripts running on the server that do ban IP
addresses automatically for bad behaviour at times, so I'm not totally
against it if it is something that everyone else wants to do.

Dean