IP Block Range

• Darkboy132 wrote on 2014-11-28 22:50
  I administrate a wikia and I'm come across a user who constantly ban dodges over the past few months (I've banned over 50 of his IP addresses, believe me trying to talk to him didn't work). So I've asked around and people told me to do IP Block Range on the person.
  
  But exactly how do I do an IP Block Range? I mean, how do I know which range I'm supposed to block?
  
  Also just in case is there a better alternative or possible back-up solution in case all else fails?
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-11-28 23:34
  You'd do a CIDR ban, which specifies the first IP of a subnet and the subnet mask. It's not exactly straight forward, but you can read this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Range_blocks
  
  To find out which CIDR range would block the user, you can use a database like ARIN's WhoisRWS. Put the IP in the search field and it will give you a Net Range and a CIDR value (which are basically two ways to represent a range of IPs.)
  
  The only issue with that is that depending on the user ISP's network setup, CIDR ranges can be huge (tens of thousands of IPs each, or more) so you're risking a lot of collateral damage. You could experiment with manually creating a more narrow CIDR range based on his previous IPs. If you PM them to me, I could at least manually build a CIDR range based on those, so long as he didn't use proxies... in which case you'd need multiple blocks and it's not worth the hassle. xd
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-11-29 00:34
  Totally not worth it if he's using proxies, so might want to find out about that first.
  You could do something like requiring email verification, and disallow the use of disposable emails, easy enough to find a list of the common ones online. Also use regular expressions to disable "+" symbols in emails so they can't use that trick with gmail.
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2014-11-29 01:22

  Quote from Yoorah;1255620:

  If you PM them to me, I could at least manually build a CIDR range based on those, so long as he didn't use proxies... in which case you'd need multiple blocks and it's not worth the hassle. xd

  
  
  http://monstergirlquest.wikia.com/wiki/Special:BlockList
  
  Pretty much most of them are the same person, the ones that are marked for "Intimidating behavior/harassment" and "Abusing multiple accounts".
  
  

  Quote from Osayidan;1255626:

  Totally not worth it if he's using proxies, so might want to find out about that first.
  You could do something like requiring email verification, and disallow the use of disposable emails, easy enough to find a list of the common ones online. Also use regular expressions to disable "+" symbols in emails so they can't use that trick with gmail.

  
  
  Proxies?
  
  I don't think Wikia uses emails for unregistered contributors.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-11-29 01:46
  Looks like the guy is pretty dedicated... he's using multiple hosting/proxy services, lol. Or it's many people. v:
  
  I don't feel like checking all of those; you can do that. I've checked a couple, like for example, you can block:
  199.255.208.0/21 - AnchorFree (VPN proxy provider)
  23.27.249.0/24 - Looks like a network hosted by EGIHOSTING (they host virtual servers, which can be set up as proxies)
  68.68.96.0/24 - same as above
  216.185.32.0/19 - Alentus (another server host, can host a proxy)
  
  Just go through the list and find out who the IP range belongs to. If it's a web hosting company, you can safely do the range ban, as anyone who accesses the wiki from it would be accessing it from a proxy. The only time you have to be considerate is when you see that the IP range belongs to an ISP.
  
  

  [Image: http://i.imgur.com/DVIgtDT.png]
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2014-11-29 01:59

  Quote from Yoorah;1255632:

  Looks like the guy is pretty dedicated...

  
  
  More like ridiculously persistent. :/ The things the person said were even worse. If you're curious about the contents I can PM it to you.
  
  

  Quote from Yoorah:

  I don't feel like checking all of those; you can do that. I've checked a couple, like for example, you can block:
  199.255.208.0/21 - AnchorFree (VPN proxy provider)
  23.27.249.0/24 - Looks like a network hosted by EGIHOSTING (they host virtual servers, which can be set up as proxies)
  68.68.96.0/24 - same as above
  216.185.32.0/19 - Alentus (another server host, can host a proxy)
  
  Just go through the list and find out who the IP range belongs to. If it's a web hosting company, you can safely do the range ban, as anyone who accesses the wiki from it would be accessing it from a proxy. The only time you have to be considerate is when you see that the IP range belongs to an ISP.
  
  

  [Image: http://i.imgur.com/DVIgtDT.png]

  
  
  That's fine, thanks for the IP ranges.
  
  So how exactly does ARIN or w/e works?
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-11-29 20:27
  ARIN is a non-profit organization in charge of managing/assigning IP address ranges to organizations (mostly in North America) that need them. For example, an ISP needs to own a group of IPs before they can assign these IPs to their customers, like yourself. They get their IPs from ARIN. The same applies to many organizations who need their own groups of IP addresses. ARIN then lets you look up who owns which range via their search tool.
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2014-11-29 20:47
  Huh, I almost thought I had to log in. Thank you.
  
  Also fuck proxies. :shoe:
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-11-29 20:49

  Quote from Darkboy132;1255686:

  Huh, I almost thought I had to log in. Thank you.
  
  Also fuck proxies. :shoe:

  
  
  Proxies are a good thing when used for the right reasons.
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2014-11-29 22:56

  Quote from Osayidan;1255687:

  Proxies are a good thing when used for the right reasons.

  
  
  Except this guy is using them for the WRONG reasons! Making proxies purely to "declare war" and vandalize/harass/spam a Wikia is just the worst.