How Many User Accounts Before Database Issues?

**GK User** Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:20 am

It seems that no matter what I try, some spam bot somewhere will always find a way in.

I thought about deleting them, but I read that it's better to just leave the account on the server and block it, because that way the email address is still in the database and can't be used to sign up another account.

At the moment, I have around 1,000 (or more) user accounts in my database that are spammers I have blocked. What I'm wondering is how many of these addresses can be held in the database before it starts to bog the system down. Does anyone have any experience with this?

**teitbite** Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:13 am

Hi

Database can store a lot, so not worry. I have projects where number of records is in milions.

Try using some firewall, they have a list of mails/ips from known bots.

I know it's a problem, but nowedays bots are asking human to pass a captcha for them, so it's quite hard to get rid of bots entirely.

**GK User** Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:27 pm

teitbite wrote: I have projects where number of records is in milions.

That makes me feel much better.

I have been thinking of using the SpamBot Check extension because it checks the IP address against spammer databases upon registration and/or login. It seems like something that would be a great tool, but they do not know if it will work with Jomsocial and their response to me leaves me with doubts that it will. I need to set up a test environment to check it out.

The weird thing is that most of these bots aren't even doing anything, so I don't know why they are even registering on the site. Once in a while I will get one that does some activity on jomsocial or will try to spam a comment, but most of them just sit dormant and never log in. Makes me wonder what the point is.

**teitbite** Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:33 am

Hi

Please take a closer look into this component: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... ction/8968 . It helped me in the exact same issue some time ago but with K2 comments, hopefully it will lock it for jomsocial as well.

**GK User** Sat May 17, 2014 11:32 pm

Thanks again teitbite. Sorry for coming back late. I'm curious as to if you have ever tried the country block feature, and if so, did it slow your server down at all?

At one point I had considered blocking all of China via WHM, but it was suggested to me that this is a bad idea because the IP tables would become so large that it would create significant delays for anyone trying to access the site. I'm not sure if that is accurate, but it made sense at the time so I never tried it.

**teitbite** Tue May 20, 2014 11:00 am

Hi

It will slow when You will block every single IP in this country

but blocking is available by a country IP which is only one number, so it's not a noticable one additional function while user opens the page. The component I gave You a link to has a country blocking option as well.