[Smitty]

Well, I really don't have too much of a spam problem these days. I have moderators pretty much from around the world, and someone is usually on the site, even on weekends, so spam by cell phone sellers, etc. is usually caught quickly. Essentially we ban the email address. and don't have many repeat offenders (or so it appears).

I guess it depends on your site and how everything is set up, etc., what type of spam you're getting - That sort of thing.

I shy away from banning IPs unless we see a pattern. An individual IP isn't a big issue but when you start getting blocks where the last or second to last set of numbers is the only difference I look closely. A few years ago I was getting a lot of spam from an IP block and I did a partial IP ban and knocked out one of Israels largest telecom blocks. A moderator who lives in Israel emailed me - He could get on with his home ISP (if I remember correctly) but his office computer was blocked. I took out the IP block and the problem was gone. ***NOTE: Do a traceroute on the IP before even considering an IP ban (BUT it should be noted that a lot of spammers use anonymous proxies so even a traceroute is a guess). Since then I've been very wary of blocking IP addresses.

There are several moderators on my site that pay close attention to IPs and look for IP correlations for spammers, which this mod makes easy. The only IP I currently have banned is: 212.247.71.34

I will say this mod is one of the best I have - I say that because the moderators just really love it. I stave off spammers with some setup stuff like a couple of key word blocks, email registration activation, and another mod which allows me to not allow links or email addresses in posts by posters with less than x posts (x for me is 8).

Luckily I can say that we don't get many spammers these days so I can't say it's a problem on my board. None the less, the moderators and I love this mod for quick, easy 'disposal' of the spammer and the post(s).

EDIT ADD: If you're getting repeat spammers (spammers from the same IP) and you get rid of spam posts within 3 to 6 hours, they're probably not the same person. If they know you're deleting their spam promptly it doesn't make too much sense for them to keep wasting their time posting. My board has a lot of moderators and most spam on my board is gone within minutes rather than hours because at least one moderator is almost always online.