fraudulent traffic/gosurf/blocking ip's

[big_jimmi]

Could anyone give me any advise about blocking ip's to reduce fraudulent traffic?

I've recently started to receive a lot of fraudulent enquiries on my site. When ive examined where the traffic came from it appears to be direct to the site IE typing our url into the address bar rather than from a referering site.

The IP address ranges all seem to be from the USA (we only trade in the UK. Also when Ive looked at the user agent string from the enquiries and they all seem to end in gosurf (which I've found out if a browser and site that uses proxies).

So I want to block these IP ranges via my htaccess file. Is this a wise thing to do or should I look at other options?

Many thanks in advance

[jomaxx]

You can also use .htaccess to ban any surfer whose HTTP_USER_AGENT contains "Gosurf". That could be more efficient than hunting down all the proxies the scammers could be using, but it might also be overkill. If you use a form submission for inquiries, why not have that script insert a warning message if the user is using Gosurf?

Heck, the form could also add the user's IP address and a lookup of where the user is located.

[big_jimmi]

Thanks for that - It would be easier to do that rather than individual ip's.