Block registration from specific Countries

[Snowhog]

Can vBulletin natively block registrations from specified Countries?

[glennrocksvb]

Not countries per se but you can block IPs from a country in AdminCP > Settings > Options > User Moderation. In vB5, it's called User Banning.

But it's better to block at the server level. You can do that by blocking IPs using htaccess:

https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-block-visitors-from-countries-using-htaccess

Or if you're using Cloudflare, you can block or issue a challenge to a user from a specific country by setting a rule in Security > WAF > Custom rules. You don't have to specify IPs, you just have to select the Country field and type the desired value.

[Snowhog]

We are running Apache v2.4.65 on our server.

I downloaded the IPv4 Apache 2.4 .htaccess deny file for the Russian Federation. It has:

<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not ip 2.16.20.0/23
.
.
.
Require not ip 217.199.254.0/24
</RequireAll>

I've omitted the content between the first/last entry; the list is HUGE!

Our .htaccess file has this:

# Begin Bad Bot Blocking
BrowserMatchNoCase SkimBot/1.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Mail.Ru/1.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Mail.RU/2.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Mail.RU_Bot/2.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase OmniExplorer_Bot/6.11.1 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase omniexplorer_bot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Baiduspider bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Baiduspider/2.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase yandex bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase yandeximages bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Spinn3r bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase sogou bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Sogouwebspider/3.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Sogouwebspider/4.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase sosospider+ bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase jikespider bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase ia_archiver bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase PaperLiBot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase ahrefsbot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase ahrefsbot/1.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase SiteBot/0.1 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase DNS-Digger/1.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase DNS-Digger-Explorer/1.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase boardreader bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase radian6 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase R6_FeedFetcher bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase R6_CommentReader bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase ScoutJet bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase ezooms bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase CC-rget/5.818 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase libwww-perl/5.813 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase magpie-crawler 1.1 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase jakarta bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase discobot/1.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase MJ12bot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase MJ12bot/v1.2.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase MJ12bot/v1.2.5 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase SemrushBot/0.9 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase MLBot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase butterfly bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase SeznamBot/3.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase HuaweiSymantecSpider bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Exabot/2.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase netseer/0.1 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase NetSeer crawler/2.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase NetSeer/Nutch-0.9 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase psbot/0.1 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Moreoverbot/x.00 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase moreoverbot/5.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase SocialSpider-Finder/0.2 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase MaxPointCrawler/Nutch-1.1 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase willow bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Vagabondo bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Vagabondo/3.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Bilbo bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Exabot/3.0 bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Exabot/3.0/BiggerBetter bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Exabot-Thumbnails bat_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Exabot-Images/3.0 bad_bot

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from env=bad_bot
# End Bad Bot Blocking​

Do I add the new content before or after the existing content? Does it matter?

Added:
I figured it out. I'm not going to block the entire Country, just identified IPv4 ranges. I've added two at this time. I have seen a significant increase in new registrations from 'this country', and none of them are good actors. I know it from experience. The email addresses used in each of the new registrations contains 'many periods'. Which is why I inquired about a MOD to address that; too many periods in registering email address.

[Snowhog]

Well I just received a new registration notification, and the IP address is within one of the two IP ranges I have in our .htaccess file. Why?

Added:
Well, I 'think' I know why. The .htaccess file I should have added the block section to is the one in our root (public_html) directory. I've removed the section I added to the .htaccess file that precedes that directory, and added it to the .htaccess file in the root (public_html) directory.

Now I wait to see if no more new registrations from the two blocked CIDRs occurs.