spam-whacking: how much help is banning by ip?

[goddess_dix]

Was hoping for some sugestions from more experienced forum admins; I recently took over a reasonably-sized board (abt 11,000 members) and am still learning the ropes.

When we have spam registrations, currently my mods ban by user, email and ip. Looking into available mods to make this process easier for them, I saw mention that banning the email addy wasn't needed if you're retaining the banned users with unique emails required. This makes sense to me. (although i'm not sure this is necessarily the best approach, either.)

And I started wondering about banning by ip: how helpful is it? do most of the spammers use proxys anyway? is it very likely that legitimate users will get caught in the net if you use full ip's?

and over time, will all these bans set up slow down the board?

If I can clearly understand what most needs to be done, then it will be easier for me to select among the available hacks and options to give my mods the best, easiest to work tools i can find. that's my goal.

your thoughts appreciated.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Moved, not a big board discussion.

[goddess_dix]

ok...sorry.

[XFSImperial]

I've found that banning by IP usually ends up doing very little if its an experienced or dedicated spammer. They'll use multiple proxies, and they are near limitless to attempt to block every single one. You can look into proxy blocking mods, but even then, some don't stop anonymous proxies.

You should be careful when banning IP ranges. Depending on how large you make the range, you could potentially ban users that are guilty of nothing. Just keep that in check and don't go overboard. Where possible, ban specific addresses or troublesome proxy hosts.

In my own experience, its always an uphill fight. You ban, they proxy. You proxy block and they find newer & better proxies to use. I personally think it would be more entertaining to add spam users to the "tachy goes coventry" setting whereby the account can post but no one except admins can see it.

[goddess_dix]

thanks for your feedback. i appreciate it.

we don't ban ip ranges, just individual ips. but i have wondered how effective that really is and suspected, like you're saying here, that for dedicated spammers, it does nothing pretty much.

i personally wouldn't consider the "tachy goes coventry" because i have no interest in swelling our database with the daily spammers tide that we get. i'd rather use the resources on something that is of benefit to us.