Should I block internet traffic from Ukraine?

I think I'm kinda done with it... and this is really a "Are there any real members of the forum, who contribute good stuff (that isn't exclusively classifieds), that justify not blocking Ukraine?".

Nearly all of the comment spam on the site comes from Ukraine.

Nearly all of the attempted fraud comes from Ukraine.

Nearly all of the classifieds that are viewed as suspicious (stolen goods) comes from Ukraine.

Nearly all of the malware and web threats comes from Ukraine.

I already have Ukraine set up as "challenge", which means that people accessing from Ukraine have to pass a web captcha each time they visit the site. And that has made a significant reduction on comment spam, but the weird classifieds stuff still gets through, and I still have to deal with that.

This morning I banned someone for cross-posting, spam, SHOUTING... and that he was in Ukraine and the provenance is very questionable, prices too good to be true, and requesting bank transfers just didn't help him try and argue against it. That conversation ended with me being called a racist... so yeah, I'm kinda done with dealing with that stuff.

So this is a: Does anyone have a really good reason not to just null route all Ukrainian internet traffic into a black hole?

Classifieds are not a good reason.

I'll accept other reasons, i.e. there's at least 1 great user of the forum that isn't flooding the place with shitty classifieds and is based in the Ukraine.

Oh, and it's Tuesday... I'll null route Ukrainian IP traffic on Friday unless someone comes up with a great reason not to.

Do it.

Could this block be circumvented via VPN?

So long as you leave Poland alone; I'm waiting on that Koga frame, and have had good dealings the last couple times. Plus I like Warsaw. Is it exclusively Ukrainian issues? Or also other FSU block?

as long as you somehow offer legit honest ukrainians help with bypassing the block.
it must suck if you cannot contribute to or gain knowledge from the best cycling/fixed forum in the world simply because most of your compatriots are criminal.

how will we get all those ex ussr era, ratty takihon track / pursuit bikes ?

No that it matters, but Ukraine may be a transit location for the scammers' internet providers taking advantage of low prices. I know a guy in the IP transit business and he reckons a ton of questionable traffic comes via Russia and Ukraine from China, for what that's worth (not much!).

http://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/in-romania-a-quiet-city-has-become-the-global-hub-for-hackers-and-online-crooks/hacking-hacker-romania-pirate-scam-internet-website/c4s10532/

Racists

Yes, VPNs work and they do circumvent.

Legitimate traffic will do this... use a VPN. Whereas the casual "we'll spam all cycle websites" or "I'll just put this advert on these 5" will be stopped as they're frankly lazy.

Internet traffic from Ukraine, Russia, and China has been null-routed to a 403 error page.

It's annoyingly effective, I couldn't even bypass it with a VPN so that made testing it difficult.

How did you achieve this- what method to block the traffic?

hmmm. @scorch is in russia. give him a goodguy pass?

How about Romania as well?

I'll whitelist Russia.

Yeah, that's the next most fraud-centric set of traffic. It's tempting.

CloudFlare Geo-IP, which uses Maxmind data.

Then the following nginx config:

This outside of the server block:

map $http_cf_ipcountry $allow_country {
    default yes;
    CN no;
    UA no;
}

map $host $test_country {
    default: no;
    http://www.lfgss.com yes;
}

This inside the virtual server block:

  if ($test_country = yes) {
    set $block Y;
  }
  if ($allow_country = no) {
    set $block "${block}Y";
  }
  if ($block = YY) {
    return 403;
  }

The horrid thing there is that nginx does not allow nested IF statements, or multiple conditions... so instead I use single conditions to concat a string and test for the fully constructed string and then return 403.

I have seen much of this dodgy posting and have been in complete support when some threads have been removed but there are some good chaps in Ukraine as well as bad ones in Uk.
Whilst a fair amount of user identity changes seem to add to the problem I think that genuine users should not be barred because of their nationality because of blanket sanctions.
Maybe any Ukrainians could contact you and state their case individually or be vouched for by other members - I'm not really sure what the solution is but it would be a shame for anyone to be tarred with the wrong brush as it were.
Si

Oh wow! I was at the office when the 403 thingy started coming up and I was not sure if it was the site or my admin :) I was going to email David later in the evening but when I got home site was back "up" again. I can see now what was happening... That's sad. I understand bad traffic is causing you guys a lot of hassle, but I surely wouldn't like to lose access to the great community after being a member for over 6 years. The decision is yours though, just let me know if there's any way I could still stick around :) I'm a Ukrainian still based out of Russia. Thanks!

Your case looks pretty rare..

Harsh times for our friends in the east...

Odd thread. Would not bang.

2/10

Harsh times for our friends in the east...

Stratford's always been pretty awful tbh.

@Velocio I hope someone has pointed out already that when cornered/banned a scammer will say anything that might give them an opening to scam again, if that means calling you a racist then sure enough someone will call you that in the hope the ban is dropped/delayed.