Spamhaus blocklists

[Owen]

How effective are the Spamhaus blocklists on the forum? I know first hand how useful they are for E-Mail, which they're designed for, but on a forum?

The reason I ask is because twice now I've tried to make a posting from my phone and failed because 12 hours ago somebody was spamming from my IP. It's incredibly annoying after spending 5-10 minutes writing out a message.

So, please, are they really that effective or can we disable them? Alternatively, perhaps only apply them to users less than a month old or with less than a certain number of posts?

[JamesM]

Selective spamhaus blocking is impossible: as Chase has mentioned before unfortunately the spamhaus system blocks IPs even before the phpBB software sees the connection.

Disabling is something I have no clue about, so shall keep schtum.

[quanganht]

Don't use Spamhaus on the forums. It's so annoying.

[JamesM]

Don't use Spamhaus on the forums. It's so annoying.

Less annoying than a shitload of spam. YMMV.

[Love4Boobies]

Still, sometimes people are blocked for no good reason.

[Combuster]

People/ISPs should stop using dynamic IP addresses. It solves a lot of mistaken identity problems and abuse alike.

[Owen]

People/ISPs should stop using dynamic IP addresses. It solves a lot of mistaken identity problems and abuse alike.

Don't expect the phone providers to do that any time soon: 99% of their phones only connect to the internet for 1-2 minutes at a time. The number of IPs they have is nowhere near the amount of customers

(And all the UK phone operators recently revealed "We don't have a clue who used what IP address at what time" as well. Their internet profit margins are *tiny*. They quite simply cant' afford the IP addresses)

[Solar]

Actually, I am pretty sure that without dynamic IP's our current IP system (IPv4) would have already collapsed. 2^32 IP addresses might sound much, but when you have to pass out blocks at a time to providers (for routing purposes), and with the number of IP-enabled devices out there already (PCs, cell phones, ...), it gets difficult.

And I am not sure if even IPv6 will solve this particular problem. For one, faking an IP is not that difficult...

[JAAman]

think... 7 billion people, times 2 computers (minimum -- one home, and one at work), plus 1 (sometimes 2) cell phones, plus all the routers, servers, reserved blocks of addresses... i think we are probably using around 20-30 billion ip addresses... and there are only 4 billion to begin with!

dynamic addresses arent the only problem, since some isps are using NAT translation to give the same address to multiple customers simultaneously, and almost all homes/businesses/schools share a single 1 or 2 addresses amongst a large number of computers (iirc, this forum has banned entire schools before, in an attempt to eliminate a single troublesome person or spammer)

[Owen]

Actually, I am pretty sure that without dynamic IP's our current IP system (IPv4) would have already collapsed. 2^32 IP addresses might sound much, but when you have to pass out blocks at a time to providers (for routing purposes), and with the number of IP-enabled devices out there already (PCs, cell phones, ...), it gets difficult.

And I am not sure if even IPv6 will solve this particular problem. For one, faking an IP is not that difficult...

End users will be getting /64s or /48s, most likely, but statically assigned to a customer. Probably the case for mobile devices will be different

[js]

Selective spamhaus blocking is impossible: as Chase has mentioned before unfortunately the spamhaus system blocks IPs even before the phpBB software sees the connection.

I'm getting blocked too, quite annoying... I get the "your ip is blocked" only when I've finished typing a message and I click "send" or "preview". So IPs aren't blocked before they reach phpbb.

I have to use a proxy each time I want to post... My IP is a shared connection for our whole "university-apartments-for-studients" (dunno how to say *that* in english...), and we only have outbound port 80 and 443. So I guess either our internet gateway is getting compromised (I'll see if I can warn the administrators about that), either the ip is getting faked.

[Firestryke31]

"university-apartments-for-studients" (dunno how to say *that* in english...)

[OT ] I believe the "technical" term for that is "dorms." If not, it's probably pretty close.[/OT]

[JamesM]

"university-apartments-for-studients" (dunno how to say *that* in english...)

[OT ] I believe the "technical" term for that is "dorms." If not, it's probably pretty close.[/OT]

or "halls", in British English (from the term "Halls of Residence").

[FlashBurn]

The only thing I can say, this is like if you have to proof that you are not guilty and not like it is in a democracy. I just got blacklisted only because I now have an IP which was blacklisted over 3 days ago?! I mean here in Germany you get disconnected after 24h so why should one blacklist an ip for over 3days?