It just seems that all the bots that target my forum are coming from The Netherlands.

I employed the question/answer verification at the same time.

Yep... it seems to be working.

This decision to ban the IP's didn't come overnite, I assure you. This was months of aggravation. If I see an influx of new members using new IP's from The Netherlands I'll have to try something else... not sure what. It sucks to ban an entire country, but I did what I needed to do to maintain the quality of my community and for the sake of my sanity.

My (dutch) IP is also not on your list.

PS Many (well i just checked 1 and the first was already a hit) IP ranges on your list are not used in the Netherlands. I think you are confused as the european IP registration is done by RIPe, which is located in the Netherlands.

For example:
91.194.6

This is not a dutch IP address.

http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?form_ty..._search=Search

inetnum: 91.194.6.0 - 91.194.7.255
netname: METAVERSUM-1
descr: Metaversum GmbH
country: DE

I was just thinking the same :rolleyes:

i use this site here which is pretty good on IP country seraches http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation

I've been playing with the idea of getting a developers licence and making a plugin for the admin cp, i think something like this would be beneficial to admins ;)

I humbly apologize for the behavior of some of my fellow Amsterdam-based ip number holders :o

Hahahaha... you're forgiven.

Ja dagggggggggggggggggggggggggggg!
Dont block mokum!

Why not moderate first posts this combined with selective IP bannishment should reduce the spam quite a bit. Also using a hack to detect multiple accounts will help with your IP ban list. We still have accounts being created for bots with IPs that are not banned but the bots themselves rotate through a group of IPs that are banned when attempting to post the spam. It can be time consuming and take some effort but in less then a month we have reduced spam to a level that is managable by the site staff and we have not had a reduction in new user registrations.

YES!

I use the excellent Duplicate IP Report by BOP5 that runs a weekly report for me on user accounts that use the same IP.

I don't automatically ban duplicates, only if one of the users spammed, then I ban that IP and hence all the duplicates.

Sometimes there are families or roommates with separate accounts which use the same IP, so you have to be discriminate about how you use the information from the report imo.

Also my IP (81.70.161.xx) is not on your list, en ik ben toch echt in nederland, vlak bij Apeldoorn)
Translation: ...: and i'm realy in the Netherlands, close to Apeldoorn.

I suggest you to install vbStopForumSpam. (mod)
It save's me a lot of removing the spammers.
I use it in combination with stop the registration bots (mod) which i have set at minimum of 25 seconds register time