VinnieD wrote:Something a little more powerful you can do if you see the same spammer coming back is to ban their dynamic range (essentially every IP address their ISP can assign them). Click "Administrate User," then click "Who is" Under their IP. You'll see two numbers with a dash between them. Copy those.
Click "users and groups" at the top tab, then "Ban IPs" on the left side. Then paste that number in there. Be VERY sure you got it exactly right and that there are NO SPACES in it. Leaving in a space can break the board.
Click submit and you've now banned an entire group if IP addresses. Now this is a rather scorched earth approach, so I wouldn't do it with any spam coming out of North America or Western Europe. I mostly use this for Russian and Eastern European spammers, who are typically non-English speakers who's neighbors are very unlikely to be using my own boards.
Sadly this is going to get MUCH harder to do when IPv6 rolls out and IP addresses become more plentiful.
I don't think I'd recommend going this far, at least not yet. If regular bannings don't work then we'll see about upping our firepower.