Blocking Access from China

Blocking Entire ip Ranges

[Edge]

I began blocking all visitors whose ip begins with 211 about a month ago. I decided to do this due to the large number a hack atempts as well as the bandwidth hogs from ip addresses 211. . This effectively blocks folks from China, Korea and some parts of Australia. My site does not do business in this part of the world so, I doubt I will loose out on the business.

Who else out there has resorted to simular measures? Is this a bad idea? Any other addresses I should consider blocking?

[Key_Master]

I ban visitors from China too. Here's some more IP ranges to add to your list.

# China
deny from 202.108.
deny from 211.96.
deny from 211.97.
deny from 61.155.
deny from 61.146.
deny from 61.174.
deny from 61.175.
deny from 61.177.
deny from 61.48.
deny from 218.2.
deny from 218.3.
deny from 218.4.

[chiyo]

Actually im surprised more sites that are just catering 100% to certain geographic markets are not using this.

[Woz]

The danger is of course that you could be blocking innocent parties as well.

My ISP is the Australian arm of a New Zealand company and so I often get redirected to New Zealand SEs by mitake as the IP is owned by the New Zealand parent company. Just something to think about.

Babies and Bathwater and all that...

Onya
Woz

[wish I could speel!...]

(edited by: Woz at 4:49 am (utc) on May 11, 2002)

[chiyo]

That's a good point Woz. By doing this you would also be blocking off people you want to see your site who are working or travelling in those places. These people may also assume that your site is dead. Guess I just answered my own question...

Also Im not sure how credible all this stuff is about the naughty Chinese spammers. Take email spam. US hosts seem to be turning off email from China and East Asia generally due to "the large amounts of spam coming from there". However when i look through my own email spam received occasionally, even with us running asia-focussed sites, spam from US IP's (one country) still far outweighs spam from East Asian IP's put together!

[bill]

What chiyo said...I run some Chinese and Japanese websites and have to keep those channels of information open, but I agree the vast majority of spam I get is from the US...what do you say chiyo & Woz, let's filter out all of those pesky .com spammers ;) Pot? This is the Kettle...you're black

I really think the filtering is out of hand in a lot of cases. You have to step back and think that there just might be a legitimate reason someone in another part of the world might want to see your information or contact you. Sometimes this comes across as being a bit small-minded, but I can see where there would be legitimate reasons for turning off traffic or mail as well...that's your prerogative. </rant>