i have now, officially, blocked IP address ranges in the following countries:

afghanistan
albania
angola
argentina
aruba
australia
austria
bangladesh
belarus
belgium
bhutan
bolivia
bosnia & herzegovina
brazil
british virgin islands
bulgaria
cambodia
canada
chile
china
colombia
congo
cote d’ivoire
croatia
czech republic
denmark
ecuador
egypt
el salvador
estonia
finland
france
georgia
germany
ghana
greece
guatemala
honduras
hong kong
hungary
iceland
india
indonesia
iran
iraq
ireland
israel
italy
japan
jordan
kazakhstan
kenya
kyrgyzstan
latvia
lithuania
luxembourg
macao
malaysia
mexico
moldova
monaco
mongolia
morocco
myanmar
netherlands
new zealand
nigeria
norway
pakistan
panama
paraguay
peru
philippines
poland
romania
russia
serbia
seychelles
singapore
slovakia
south africa
south korea
spain
sweden
switzerland
taiwan
tajikistan
tanzania
thailand
Trinidad & tobago
turkey
UK
ukraine
uruguay
USA
uzbekistan
vietnam

the big winners are china, russia, and india, and the runners up are spain, uzbekistan and kazakhstan…

and the good ol’ united states of ‘merica makes an appearance, as well.

before i started blocking whole swaths of IP addresses, the CPU usage on my server was between 75% and 100%, pretty much always. since i started blocking IP address ranges, my CPU usage is between 2% and 5%… which means that my web sites respond more quickly.

a side benefit is that, often, the same IP address ranges that are used by spammers, are also used by crackers, skript-kiddies, and other miscreants, so by absolutely blocking them (using both the IP Blocker and the Global Email Filters) i kill two birds with one stone. 😉

the down side is that i’ve been catching a few false positives, which are messages from people within north america, but, through no fault of their own, sent their messages at EXACTLY the right time, so that the date in their message ID gets caught by the rule that’s supposed to catch IP addresses… 😖

but, honestly, there have been fewer than 10 false positives in the last 6 months (they tend to come in spurts: i’ve caught 3 today, but haven’t seen one for months), whereas, if left unfettered, i would have received, easily, 100 times that many spam messages PER DAY, so, in all, i’m almost ready to make my list available to anybody else who wants to cut down on the people who send you spam… 😉