Should I block internet traffic from Ukraine?

Hence this thread, it allowed me to remove it as soon as I learned.

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

Comes with the territory.

Interestingly though, he may be right. Not as I believe I'm racist in any way with regards to Ukraine or Ukrainians. But... the policy isn't far from being a form of segregation, first I had it such that if you were in Ukraine you'd be captcha'd every time you visit the site... and isn't that a form of police stop-and-search, and because we still had a lot of dodgy sales, fraud, and stolen goods from Ukraine I've now basically excluded a whole country.

That's about as racist a policy one could get.

But what to do? I don't believe the shopkeeper in this case, or others in the past, specifically intend to screw people over, but they are a product of their society right now. Which is a fairly broken economy, a degree of lawlessness (law there really isn't concerned with trying to stop fraud on the internet or to stem the flow of stolen goods that Romanian gangs are shipping into the country). Each person who is trying to turn a buck on this site is just an individual person hoping to put food on their table today.

And I can see there's anger there too, here I am with this effectively racist policy, and it's actually stopped the vast majority of dodgy traffic already. A few individuals are trying to work around it, but the casual alerts I receive have fallen silent.

And there's a disturbing societal question, if profiling and exclusion works to achieve a goal, is it still wrong?

All of this is by the by, the guy is a dick and I'm glad I banned him anyway.

And there's a disturbing societal question, if profiling and exclusion works to achieve a goal, is it still wrong?

well, just because it works, doesn't make it right...

Well in this case it does.

This site isn't here to line the pockets of international traders at the expense of cyclist in London who hope for a deal, or to expose cyclist in London to fraud, malware and spam.

It's here to let a bunch of people who live near each other, get together, ride, talk, hang out.

Some part of that includes being cool with people selling to each other, but beyond that... everything else is beyond the scope of the site.

If you would like to be exposed to dodgy traders and those doing weird fraud, then eBay always has open arms for you. And if I piss off a few people, by locking them out, boo hoo.

I see the philosophical argument against blocking internet traffic from a country, but just because I recognise the validity of one interpretation of an argument, I'm really not going to consider letting that trader, or the many others I've blocked for dodgy behaviour, back onto the site.

I'll do what I can to limit impact, but Ukraine internet traffic is massively disproportionately represented in terms of those I end up banning, the hacking attempts, the fraud and suspicious goods. The deed is done.

I'm not suggesting there's anything suspicious about this guy, but he appears to be in the Ukraine.

And there's a disturbing societal question, if profiling and exclusion works to achieve a goal, is it still wrong?

if profiling works to exclude and exclusion is the goal, then it is wrong.

Is there a simple way of making Ukrainian accounts auto ignored, so people have the option to opt-in to view them by taking the user name out of their ignore list? I have no idea of how feasible that would be.

I hope there's a fun 403 page

Then it's super-cool, because the goal is to reduce fraud, comment spam and adverts for bikes and bike parts that are likely to be stolen.

Seems pretty sketchy to me.

Seems pretty sketchy to me.

Perhaps, but the reason I flagged him was technical: he claims to be in the Ukraine yet clearly isn't affected by the block, so may be something needs to be turned off then on again...

exactly

Hi guys.
After my short email, Ukraine has got unblocked.
Thanks!
Anyway, I won't be mad or something if you'll block Ukraine once again, since i'm really hating fraud and spam too. There is always a proxy to look for threads at lfgss.
Cheers.