Comments on: Blocking Certain Countries (India and Russia) From Viewing and Spamming My Website http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/ Seattle Small Business Web Design Tue, 15 May 2012 16:28:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Rob Scott http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-8574 Rob Scott Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:57:01 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-8574 I found this article somewhat useful (well, I used it to google search a list of ip addresses to block in a couple of countries) after a job was posted on a freelancer board to totally copy everything on one of our websites, and we were getting visits from one small country lasting for hours and hours. We blocked that country. I expected to see proxies etc traffic comin in for hours again, but it appears as though this user has given up. In any case, the solution, while not ideal, is effective. Using a sledgehammer to break a nut may be worth it if you really want to get into that nut! I found this article somewhat useful (well, I used it to google search a list of ip addresses to block in a couple of countries) after a job was posted on a freelancer board to totally copy everything on one of our websites, and we were getting visits from one small country lasting for hours and hours. We blocked that country. I expected to see proxies etc traffic comin in for hours again, but it appears as though this user has given up.

In any case, the solution, while not ideal, is effective. Using a sledgehammer to break a nut may be worth it if you really want to get into that nut!

]]> By: Jill Olkoski http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-6114 Jill Olkoski Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:03:45 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-6114 Actually, I completely disagree and I'll explain why. This article is not about email spam, it's about website spam, people in other countries who view your website and use it to solicit your business. For me, I used to get at least 5 emails and 1 phone call a week from India, Russia, etc asking me to outsource my web design services. Since I've blocked these countries from viewing my website, these emails and phone calls have stopped. So it's one thing to talk about things in theory, it's another to actually see the results. I've done this, and all of the solicitations via email and phone calls from India have literally stopped, and so for me, this practice of blocking countries from seeing my website is working perfectly. Since I am not really interested in doing business overseas, blocking the countries that send out spam (phone, email, whatever) works. Referencing this article: http://bighow.com/guides/simplelist-10-countries-that-send-most-spam The list of spammy countries : 1. Russian Federation 11.92% 2. United States 9.36% 3. Brazil 7.48% 4. Turkey 5.43% 5. Columbia 5.34% 6. Argentina 4.96% 7. India 4.26% 8. China 3.39% 9. Spain 2.69% 10. Republic of Korea 2.57% Now, which countries are most interested in outsourcing (the source of my calls)...Russia, India. So that's who I block. You block the countries who you don't want spam from, and who you don't have a business interest in. Again, this is not an article about email spam. This is people who visit my website and then call me on the phone trying to sell me things. I can easily track this, and the visitors who created the calls were from India and Russia. This has fixed my problem totally. So before you call a method "stupid", perhaps you should take a deep breath and read the original article more closely and understand the problem that I was trying to fix and my actual results. Actually, I completely disagree and I’ll explain why. This article is not about email spam, it’s about website spam, people in other countries who view your website and use it to solicit your business. For me, I used to get at least 5 emails and 1 phone call a week from India, Russia, etc asking me to outsource my web design services. Since I’ve blocked these countries from viewing my website, these emails and phone calls have stopped. So it’s one thing to talk about things in theory, it’s another to actually see the results. I’ve done this, and all of the solicitations via email and phone calls from India have literally stopped, and so for me, this practice of blocking countries from seeing my website is working perfectly. Since I am not really interested in doing business overseas, blocking the countries that send out spam (phone, email, whatever) works.

Referencing this article:
http://bighow.com/guides/simplelist-10-countries-that-send-most-spam

The list of spammy countries :

1. Russian Federation 11.92%
2. United States 9.36%
3. Brazil 7.48%
4. Turkey 5.43%
5. Columbia 5.34%
6. Argentina 4.96%
7. India 4.26%
8. China 3.39%
9. Spain 2.69%
10. Republic of Korea 2.57%

Now, which countries are most interested in outsourcing (the source of my calls)…Russia, India. So that’s who I block. You block the countries who you don’t want spam from, and who you don’t have a business interest in. Again, this is not an article about email spam. This is people who visit my website and then call me on the phone trying to sell me things. I can easily track this, and the visitors who created the calls were from India and Russia. This has fixed my problem totally. So before you call a method “stupid”, perhaps you should take a deep breath and read the original article more closely and understand the problem that I was trying to fix and my actual results.

]]> By: Whoever http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-6113 Whoever Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:55:54 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-6113 The problem being, if you really want to fight spam effectively this way, you really need to block all of the U.S. first as it is the world's #1 spam distributor. In fact half of the spam you get from India is actually US spam as well, just using proxies, IP spoofing and other techniques the bloody Xrumer software knows. Black holing, even combined with geotagging is a quite stupid countermeasure like the famous "drainging the seas to fight pirates" and it's bearing some fuel for discussions about ethically dubious conduct. After all, you're banning lots of people because one of them behaved wrong, that's like banning muslims from a restaurant due to OBL. Even more, it's completely ineffective! Aforementioned spam software just uses a list of open proxies and "zombie" computers in a country. If you ban that country, the software will simply switch to other proxies in other countries after some time. If nothing works anymore you will get the same spam (since it's still the same actual sender) from e.g. Kraftservers Inc. in the USA. It's a quite slippery slope, not even worth the hassle and first and foremost *the wrong battlefield*! - The proper address for your complaints is Google Inc., who invented and popularized all the incentive for the spam we suffer from - their stupid ranking algorithm. They alledgedly changed it recently but still it's easy to completely dominate Google ranking with some link spam. - Another proper address you could turn to are the companies themselves who buy black hat SEO link spamming. Use their contact forms and email addresses to let them know that their spam was found and reported to the various anti-spam networks*. Many small businesses are hiring bad web companies, probably not even knowing that they use vandalism to provide their services and might be surprised and intimidated by the news and sue the company they hired. If you have a Google Webmaster account, you can report them. Apparently too few people are using this so Google never seems to react on that. You can also report them on Siteadvisor, Web Of Trust and similar sites when a company page commits database vandalism. In some countries, if the company that was spammed for and the spammed forum are both registered there, you can even sue them. At any rate, fight the spammers and the creators of the spam environment, not countries by blackholing. You're using a vaccuum to fight dirt in your house and not putting a carpet over it every time, do you? * These anti-spam networks (StopForumSpam, Spamhaus etc.) also provide convenient APIs for your forum software to do some more targeted banning of only reported IPs, without slowing down your forums software to a crawl by long local ban lists. You can contribute by (automatically) report the yet unknown spam IPs and email addresses you blocked on your site. This doesn't spoil IP addresses for all time, is pretty effective and lets you distinguish between "potential legitimate user" and "actual spammer" The problem being, if you really want to fight spam effectively this way, you really need to block all of the U.S. first as it is the world’s #1 spam distributor. In fact half of the spam you get from India is actually US spam as well, just using proxies, IP spoofing and other techniques the bloody Xrumer software knows.

Black holing, even combined with geotagging is a quite stupid countermeasure like the famous “drainging the seas to fight pirates” and it’s bearing some fuel for discussions about ethically dubious conduct. After all, you’re banning lots of people because one of them behaved wrong, that’s like banning muslims from a restaurant due to OBL.

Even more, it’s completely ineffective! Aforementioned spam software just uses a list of open proxies and “zombie” computers in a country. If you ban that country, the software will simply switch to other proxies in other countries after some time. If nothing works anymore you will get the same spam (since it’s still the same actual sender) from e.g. Kraftservers Inc. in the USA. It’s a quite slippery slope, not even worth the hassle and first and foremost *the wrong battlefield*!

- The proper address for your complaints is Google Inc., who invented and popularized all the incentive for the spam we suffer from – their stupid ranking algorithm. They alledgedly changed it recently but still it’s easy to completely dominate Google ranking with some link spam.

- Another proper address you could turn to are the companies themselves who buy black hat SEO link spamming. Use their contact forms and email addresses to let them know that their spam was found and reported to the various anti-spam networks*. Many small businesses are hiring bad web companies, probably not even knowing that they use vandalism to provide their services and might be surprised and intimidated by the news and sue the company they hired.

If you have a Google Webmaster account, you can report them. Apparently too few people are using this so Google never seems to react on that. You can also report them on Siteadvisor, Web Of Trust and similar sites when a company page commits database vandalism. In some countries, if the company that was spammed for and the spammed forum are both registered there, you can even sue them. At any rate, fight the spammers and the creators of the spam environment, not countries by blackholing. You’re using a vaccuum to fight dirt in your house and not putting a carpet over it every time, do you?

*
These anti-spam networks (StopForumSpam, Spamhaus etc.) also provide convenient APIs for your forum software to do some more targeted banning of only reported IPs, without slowing down your forums software to a crawl by long local ban lists. You can contribute by (automatically) report the yet unknown spam IPs and email addresses you blocked on your site. This doesn’t spoil IP addresses for all time, is pretty effective and lets you distinguish between “potential legitimate user” and “actual spammer”

]]> By: Jill Olkoski http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5473 Jill Olkoski Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:39:24 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5473 Well, my hosting company does have good and bad days, just like me :-) Well, my hosting company does have good and bad days, just like me :-)

]]> By: Mike http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5472 Mike Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:35:27 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5472 Yeah Jill your blog loaded faster today. Yeah Jill your blog loaded faster today.

]]> By: Jill Olkoski http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5471 Jill Olkoski Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:37:50 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5471 Hi Mike, I have no way of knowing who may have signed up for Web-Stat. I haven't noticed the blog is loading slowly. Any external code you put on your site will impact the loading time, but I haven't had issues with Web-Stat code. Hi Mike,
I have no way of knowing who may have signed up for Web-Stat. I haven’t noticed the blog is loading slowly. Any external code you put on your site will impact the loading time, but I haven’t had issues with Web-Stat code.

]]> By: Mike http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5469 Mike Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:40:44 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5469 Hi Jill I signed up for a Web-Stat free trial to try to stop the spam at my forum on Saturday Feb. 20th. Did you get credit for my sign up? I got side tracked a bit so I'm just getting it set up. I've noticed in the last couple of days (Feb. 22nd & 23rd) that this blog of yours is loading fairly slowly. Very slowly in fact. Do you think Web-Stat is slowing down the load time of your blog? Or is it something else? I don't remember it being this slow loading last Saturday. Thanks Mike Hi Jill

I signed up for a Web-Stat free trial to try to stop the spam at my forum on Saturday Feb. 20th. Did you get credit for my sign up? I got side tracked a bit so I’m just getting it set up. I’ve noticed in the last couple of days (Feb. 22nd & 23rd) that this blog of yours is loading fairly slowly. Very slowly in fact. Do you think Web-Stat is slowing down the load time of your blog? Or is it something else? I don’t remember it being this slow loading last Saturday.

Thanks
Mike

]]> By: Carla http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5443 Carla Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:30:44 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5443 Thanks for answering my question as to why are so many of my blog visitors from India. I do receive a lot of spam comments and now I know why. Thanks for answering my question as to why are so many of my blog visitors from India. I do receive a lot of spam comments and now I know why.

]]> By: Jill Olkoski http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5420 Jill Olkoski Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:18:47 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5420 Hi Richard, I can say I've been really, really happy with the Geo Targeting feature of Web-Stat. Every once in a while, for some reason, a single visitor gets through, but I'd say it successfully blocks 99%, which actually saves me time, as I'm not getting as many solicitations. Hi Richard,
I can say I’ve been really, really happy with the Geo Targeting feature of Web-Stat. Every once in a while, for some reason, a single visitor gets through, but I’d say it successfully blocks 99%, which actually saves me time, as I’m not getting as many solicitations.

]]> By: Richard Cummings http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/blocking-certain-countries-india-and-russia-from-viewing-and-spamming-my-website/comment-page-1/#comment-5419 Richard Cummings Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:54:29 +0000 http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/?p=561#comment-5419 Ah, I just came across this article because I have a HUGELY disproportionate amount of Russian visitors to my websites. Surprisingly, I did not find a whole lot of information (people must not check their stats much) but I really like this idea of geo-targeting and may give it shot. Thanks for the heads up Jill! Ah, I just came across this article because I have a HUGELY disproportionate amount of Russian visitors to my websites. Surprisingly, I did not find a whole lot of information (people must not check their stats much) but I really like this idea of geo-targeting and may give it shot. Thanks for the heads up Jill!

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