Reply To: htaccess Block IP Address – Block Access to Files by IP Address

Blocking by IP Addresses is not really effective unless you want to block entire countries.  This is a Chinese spammer IP address:  112.5.234.  If you block this IP address then the spammer has millions of other IP addresses that he/she can use and will switch too and most likely will switch to other IP addresses, then when you block those will switch to other IP addresses, etc etc etc etc.  We spent months researching this and conclusively found that a CAPTCHA method is the optimum anti-spammer method to use.  In BPS Pro we created JTC Anti-Spam.  For BPS free users I recommend installing a CAPTCHA plugin.

Here is the research page for reference:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/buddypress-spam-registration-buddypress-anti-spam-registration/