Ip spam filter on htaccess

bic Member, Translator
edited November 2018 in Plugins

I've created a plugin that adds a blocked IP list, updated at a chosen time interval from myip.ms, to .htaccess file. I'm not sure if it deserves the time I spent on it, because I'm aware that apache discourages using long .htaccess files, for performance reasons. Nevertheless i tried it on my website and I didn't experiment any performance loss so far. So I'm here not only for, in case, offer this plugin to the community, but also to get advice about the opportunity of using it myself. I guess it can be useful for sites running on fast servers, with low human traffic and high spam impact.

Comments

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    Generally blocking by IP is problematic as lot of visitors share the IP of their provider. So you might get a lot of false positives (beside the IP being "personal data" in the EU which I am not sure how this may play into this additionally).

    Are you aware that there is an (older) ipBlocker plugin included which does not use htaccess?

    But anyway of course release it via GitHub or else if it fixes any problem for you and possibly others. We'll then add it to our extensions list.

  • bic Member, Translator

    Yes, I've tried loading the list with ipBlocker, but it was too long to get loaded, that's why I moved to this other solution. Of course the "personal data" one could be a big problem nowadays. Actually I was asking myself how can they (on myip) publish the blacklist and provide a free script available to everybody.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    Well, the EU with it laws is not the whole world so it might still be of use for someone. And it is up to each user to comply with local laws of course. So probably a warning about GDPR and such should be included to make aware of that.

  • bic Member, Translator

    Ok, I'll refine this and some others details and then provide a link to the plugin.

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