Should you block Russia and China completely to avoid human spammers?

With all the spam coming out of Russian botnets and Chinese spam farms, do you think it's a good idea to block those IP ranges completely, or would you rather not take the chance you could be blocking a legitimate member from those countries?

 

Seeing as I've never had a problem with "human spammers" (particularly from these two countries), I don't feel the need, nor find it necessary, to completely deny them access.

 

Only human spammer I've had to deal with was a friend using a VPN and being an idiot.

He lives within walking distance so I don't think he's in Russia or China. I currently don't see a need to block those IP ranges.

 

No, I do not block those countries. I would like to, but I also consider my forum an international community. So to be international, you can not be blocking countries because of the actions of a few people.

 

The number one country where spam originates? The United States. Russia is number two. Then England (UK) and Germany. China comes in at number five.

BotScout.com: Bot Statistics

You should ponder that before you decide to ban entire countries. You can't go by email address because there are no controls on most TLDs. People from any country can register domains in almost any other country. You can't rely on I.P. Address blocks because spammers can use zombie PCs to deliver their goods. What does this mean? It means that your neighbor can spam your site and make it appear as if it came from Russia.

Third party aggregation services like BotScout.com and StopForumSpam.com are the answers today. Integrate with them and check your registrations with them. Chances are by the time they try to register on your site, they have already been reported. If someone is reported than the system won't let them register. No worrying about countries, IP addresses or domain names.

 

Awesome post.

Even if China were the top source of spam content in the world, I wouldn't be able to justify banning an entire country--especially China. China has a middle class growing at an unprecidented rate. A larger middle class means more money to spend on wants, like internet access or a computer. In addition, given the magnitude of China's population, you would be crazy to attempt to ban Chinese IP Addresses.

 

Since spam floods haven't been an issue for me so far, let alone from just these two countries, I cannot justify the banning of them. But I'm fairly confident that I don't have users from these two countries anyways, so it wouldn't be a big deal.

Regardless though, I don't think it's "right" as some others have said.

 

Nope! Stop Forum Spam integration, each day, every day, all the way.

We get about one spammer a week, on average. That is perfectly acceptable considering our wonderful and lovely Russian and Chinese members : )

 

Our forum is not really of much interest to anyone outside the UK. I try not to block whole ranges, but atm, we have a server block on 121.x.x.x and 122.x.x.x

 

Nope, I don't want to block an entire region. I think that dealing with a handful of spammers every week is just part of being a forum staffer, one of those things all forums deal with. If anything, it keeps the staff active and on its toes. They enjoy banning spammers, makes them feel as though they are really doing their part as Mods and Admins. The only issue I did have was with the @mail.ru registration emails. It was happening continually so I did end up blocking that domain.

 

I wouldn't block an entire region, no. I'll just continue to ban the IP/e-mail of the spammers when I get them. They're actually not a problem for me anymore, so it's not too much of a concern when I do get the occasional spammer.

 

We have valid members from each nation so no, would definitely not block.

 

Well yes. gawab.com and mail.ru are so thoroughly spammer infested I block both, but that doesn't block Russia or Arabia.

 

no, i wouldnt cause my co-admin on one forum is from china!!! he wouldnt be too happy if i banned him :rofl: who else will un ban me if i accidentally ban myself again!!!

i only banip's of members who have done something really bad, or spammers who have actually posted spam, registered with something like "freeviagra" or something like that or have an email adress that matches well known forum spammers

 

I block both of those all other countries known to be spammers where MINIs or Lotuses are not sold.

 

Unless the spam is so bad I can't take of it myself, I'd never exclude portions of the world that large.