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Blocking Countries (firewall)

I have most countries 'blocked' (firewall) and I still see from Google Analytics that there have been many (107 from RU and RU-RU) within the past week. I only allow US, Canada, and Isreal.

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I have not found country blocking to be very effective with RSFirewall!. It actually does not block countries, it blocks IP addresses that are believed to be from that country. Hackers keep changing IP addresses and the database seems to be largely ineffective.

However, Google Analytics does allow you to filter these out from your analytics.

I would strongly suggest that you create a new view and apply any filters to that view. When you filter entries from GA they are not collected for that view and they can not be put back. I have made a view that I call U.S. Only and created a filter for it that includes only the United States.

Here is how you can do that.
Login to Google Analytics
Click on Admin (in the menu near the top left of the page.)
In the third column, VIEW, use the drop down arrow and select Create new view.
You will then get the New Reporting View screen where you will have to give it a name. I named mine U.S. Only.
Click on the blue Create View button.
Now you will be in the three column display with VIEW as third Column, the view you just created should be in the drop down, if not select it.
In that column a little way down click on Filters.
Click on the red +NEW FILTER button.
In the Filter Name type any name such as U.S.
For Filter Type select Custom
Select Include (note that it is below the Filter Pattern
In Select field choose Country
For Filter Pattern type ^United States (note the ^ , not sure if it is necessary but indicates country should start with United States)
Be sure to select Include (in the list of Include, Lowercase, Uppercase, ...)
Then click on the blue Save button.
Your done.

You will have to wait a few days for this view to collect data.

Now when you click on Reporting (in the menu near the top left of the page) you will be able to select your main view with everything (usually your site URL) or the new view you created. You select it at the to right hand side of the page just above the date range.

Hope this helps

Do not use filters on your main view, if you do, and you make a mistake you could lose data.

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Bruce,
I found that blocking countries will not necessarily block all hack attempts. I'm not sure if this is a bug in rsfirewall or just the way it acts.
I've gone in and blocked high-level ip-s (xxx.*) to stop these. I also clean out my firewall logs every month (2000+ entries) to keep the system efficient.

Courtney Washburn-Marcheski 0 votes
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