Blocking of IP addresses which are sources of spam etc.

Anything about use of this forum : NOT about cycling
Post Reply
slowster
Moderator
Posts: 5477
Joined: 7 Jul 2017, 10:37am

Blocking of IP addresses which are sources of spam etc.

Post by slowster »

Of the first posts by new members which the moderators have to review and approve or disapprove every day, on average typically several are from spammers, scammers or other malign actors, and are disapproved. Sometimes such posts are obvious, but sometimes they are not immediately identifiable as malign, and further investigation and checks are needed before disapproving them.

The vast majority of spam etc. comes from VPN and similar servers, most of which are outside the UK, but some UK VPN and proxy servers are used by spammers to give the appearance of their being in the UK.

We are currently updating and progressively increasing the number of IP addresses which are blocked from accessing the forum, to include more of those servers which are sources of spam (often persistently so). A consequence of this is that a member may find out of the blue that they are unable to access the forum. This is probably more likely to happen if trying to access the forum using a third party's wi-fi where the third party's ISP is one of those which is used by spammers, particularly if outside the UK. However, it could also happen with a UK ISP, especially if it is a relatively small ISP whose IP addresses are within a much larger range used by one of the VPN servers used by spammers.

If you find that you are blocked please contact the moderators/admin, either by using another IP address, e.g. turn it off if you are using a VPN, or by using the contact us page - memberlist.php?mode=contactadmin, which is not included in the block. We have had a couple of emails in recent weeks from guest users of the forum who have contacted us to report that they have been blocked, and they were quickly unblocked. The likelihood of guest users of the forum being blocked is higher than for members, because checks are made to minimise the risk of an existing member being affected by IP addresses being blocked. If it does happen it should generally be resolved pretty quickly.
Post Reply