Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Moderate New Registrations Based On IP Geographical Origin

Original 3.7 mod here.

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.

You MUST download the zone files from this site:

http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/ (download the "all files" file)

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) (3.7.x)

2/11/2009

• 77 downloads at this point (3.7.x)
• 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:

CLICK INSTALL!

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Fynnon

i really hate russia for historical reasons but to say that every russian that comes to your site is a spammer that is really hazardous

there are many us spammers, actually usa is the "best" in the world when it comes to spam

anyway a mod for blocking spammers by ip is a very good

10x

i fear that the database from http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks could be somehow false - positive in some cases because for one bad user you could block 100 good ones if they use the same ip

No one is saying that every person in any geographical region is a spammer. But the fact remains that a high proportion of spam for many forum owners comes from registrations from China, India, Pakistan, and Russia. That's why add-ons like this one are popular. It doesn't deny the registration; it puts the registration info into the moderation queue for the administrators to inspect and make a later decision.

We are using this on one heavily spammed forum. In viewing the moderation queue, we apply certain other criteria (which I'm not going to list) to make the decision as to whether to delete or validate the registration.

[xyzmary2001]

Thank you, very useful mod! I got rid of the Russian spammers which were very persistent.

[Artes_Marciales]

Nice Mod!!
Thanks!!! : )

[Mike08]

Originally Posted by Jafo232

If you want to do that you could treat the valid country codes section as an EXCLUDE list, then just change this line in whois.php:

if (!in_array($country, $valid_countries)) { $userdata->set('usergroupid', 4); }

To this:

if (in_array($country, $valid_countries)) { $userdata->set('usergroupid', 4); }

Thanks. I have a serious problem with china's spammers. It's easier type only the exclude countries than type all valid countries, no?

Thanks again and waiting for the first

[Jafo232]

Depends.. I built this for a forum that is for a very specific region of the US and would really not garner much international interest. I moderate all registrations outside of the US and Canada just because there is a 99.9% chance they are spam.

[Mike08]

Then that's fine for a local forum. For a global ones it's better the second way.
Thanks again Jafo232 :beer:

[Greek76]

Ive got a question does this mod show which location their ip is from once they are placed in moderation?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Greek76

Ive got a question does this mod show which location their ip is from once they are placed in moderation?

No. That's why for many forums the "reverse" modification is better (i.e., approve all except those from certain countries).

To check IP addresses, you can use an online IP Lookup service like Melissa or Country IP Lookup, or use a desktop application like IPNetInfo.

All of these are free services or freeware, by the way.

[Eric Anderson]

Great Mod.
Hope you are planing to make this work with VB4. let me know as I have VB4 running right now

[Eric Anderson]

any chance of updating to VB4 I love your mod but am going to vb4 soon. Your mod eliminates all that are not using a proxy, which kills 99% spamers would love to see a banned version rather than moderated. Might look at code after transfer of vb4