The Chinese blockade....

After several changes with no avail, we've decided to implement a 'block' of the entire range of ip addresses coming from China, where 95% of the spam posts are coming from. For a while it was pretty easy to block them manually as there was usually a day or two lag from the time the spam bot registered to the time it actually posted. However, here lately, the registrations have increased in frequency, and some of them are posting 10 posts immediately. Right now it's mainly an inconvienence as it's just bs gold posts. However, I'm trying real hard to nip the problem in the bud before the porn spammers get ahold of it, and it creates a real content problem.

So what we did was put a block on the entire country of China in the hta access file to completely block them from accessing the site. In the mean time, we are researching other ways to prevent bot registration, because it's a pretty mean 'bot', so I doubt it's points of attack will stay limited to China.

Hopefully the "Chinese Blockade" works until we find a vbulletin patch. Ironically, they are only picking on the alcohol site, knock on wood, they haven't hit the Comp or Bracket board, or even the Mater, which is bigger than us in traffic.