How to Quickly Block an IP Address from your Website

Use .htaccess!!!

*Ebook Admin/Secure Apache

I’ve mentioned it before – and the technique I used to use a lot with a huge list of blocked IP addresses.  I then decided that the list was too time consuming to maintain and stopped using it except in extreme cases about the end of last year.  Such a thing was last night when I got 3 spam comment hits in rapid succession.  (is that all, I can hear the cries!).  The thing is, I hardly get to see spam because of the measures I’ve used.

But seeing spam is not the same as receiving spam!

So what I did was to quickly add a single block until this little episode is passed, probably a day or so.  It relates to this this comment here: http://strange…google-treasure-chest-phone-and-address-list/#comment-1399

This is what I added to my site’s .htaccess file:

#who has access who doesn't
order allow,deny
deny from 78.32.230.59
allow from all
#end access blocking list

Simple innit!  WordPress and it’s plugins doesn’t even get to see the ping.  Any pings from 78.32.230.59 are effortlessly palmed away.    The order of the ‘allow,deny’ is important…

Extra Investigation

I did a Google Search on a part of the text that looks really weird here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Wall+clock.+I+found+only+this%22

The text in the message I used is : “Wall clock. I found only this”

There are HUNDREDS of comment spams on websites that should really be protecting themselves better.  Websites devoted to Alzheimers Disease and even Amnesty International!

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