Question | Blocking IP's? avoiding Spam?

[itayKinnrot]

Hi,

We are running vBulletin 3.8.1.
We had lots of spam robots the last months, but now it fot relaxed after changing the Captcha.

Questions:
1. Blocking IP - Is there any chance that this feature is not working?
2. Blocking IP for a normal usser - Same, seems like same normal annoyed user registering again.
3. Any tip for avoiding spam?

Thanks

[borbole]

The ip banning should work. Did you ban a whole ip or a range of ip? But personally I find ip banning useless because they can re-register with a proxy server.

[BirdOPrey5]

Banning IPs via vBulletin is really bad practice. The feature is really a left-over from years ago- if you have hundreds (or thousands) of banned IPs it will reduce your overall performance. On every page load every banned IP is loaded into memory- the best way to really block IPs in on the server level, so they never even load vBulletin. If you have cpanel for your account there is usually an icon for an IP Block list. Otherwise you can ask your host for the best way to block IPs on the server level.

That said I've never seen a blocked IP not work- but spammers have thousands of IPs at their disposal. Even regular users can often get new IPs by resetting their home modems.

[itayKinnrot]

Thanks guys.