Moderate New Registrations Based On IP Geographical Origin
 

This mod will put any new registration into moderation so you can either approve or deny based on the physical location of the IP address. If the IP is located in a country that you white list, the registration will go through as normal.

This may be different for everyone else, but on my forums, I have yet to have a Russian IP sign up for anything other than posting SPAM. This plugin has moderated them all!

I hope to have time to eventually expand this to do other things. This works with 4.0.x.

You MUST download the zone files from this site:

http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/

The free license does not allow me to include them with the product, plus it is better to download the latest files anyway.

No real screenshots to show here, sorry.

Changelog:

12/20/2008

• Coded the routine in, instead of using external whois program.
• Now compatible with Windows
• (39 download of 1.0)

2/11/2009

• 77 downloads at this point
• Rewrote application to use zone files rather than relying on Arin

To upgrade, READ THE README, and re-install product (select overwrite).

Don't forget to:

Reserved...

So uh, dumb question, I've got it installed....now what happens? Your readme, and description is a little vague.

Users who register from countries not on your white list will be moderated.. What else do you need to know?

Ok, I dig it. I didnt know if perhaps that within the moderation panel it would show countries of origin..stuff like that. But since, I moderate everyone, this isn't really relevant...thanks for the info.

Yeah, if you moderate everyone, then this won't be useful. It is more for fine tuning your moderation criteria.

How do you know that the account signed up is going to be a spam bot or not? Because when I look at any spam bot that has spammed viagra, computer sales, TVs etc. They truly look like a legit user until they start spamming weeks later.

If you analyze their IP address they will probably be from Russia or Turkey since it seems like most of the problems of the internet derives from over there. While not as effective, if you use a website like whatsmyipaddress.com and enter the IP address into the search box it will tell you an approximation of where the IP originates from.

In any case, sounds like a great idea but since I have Windows Server 2003 so it's no good for me.

This will not tell you 100% that someone is a spam bot, however it is no secret that vast majority of forum spammers come from places like Russia, etc.. This mod will determine the country of the IP address, and if you have not white listed that country, it will put it into moderation so you can approve it.

My motivation to write this is because of one forum I run that is a local forum for a small area in NY State. It makes no sense for people from Saudi Arabia or Russia to even want an account there. At first I was just going to outright deny registrations to these countries, but figured for prudence sake, to put them in moderation just in case there was a false positive.

Still wishing you'd write this for Windows Server 2003 also.