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Question about community maintained free IP geo lists (leminal.space)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/programming@beehaw.org
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cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/24911246

I'll be self-hosting a service with user submissions soon, so I'm worried about the https://howto.geoblockthe.uk/ situation.

Based on this I've wondered, are there any community maintained geo block lists that might be useful? All database options I found are either 1. an on-demand online service which seems questionable for privacy reasons, or 2. IPv4 only, or 3. have weird terms of use with a gag clause regarding the entire company making it and other weird stuff.

I'm not a fan of geo blocking in general, but the situation is what it is.

PS: Please don't discuss the Online Safety Act itself too much in the comments, or whether somebody should be using a geo ip to handle this. While I might appreciate useful input on that, I'm hoping this post can remain a resource for those who are looking for such a database for other reasons as well.

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[–] 3 points 1 year ago

Have you considered asking OFCOM?

If there responsible for enforcement, they may offer resources or information. Otherwise they should get informed of the need.

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    [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Should be easier to block them by ASN instead of IP. That way you can control ipv6 connections too.

    But if you don't do business with the UK, I wonder if you are allowed to ignore them?

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    So is it only me, or wouldn't it be possible to write a script that 1. gets the ASN list from some place like here https://bgpview.io/reports/countries/GB and then 2. queries the list of IP ranges from here https://www.enjen.net/asn-blocklist/index.php?asn=&type=iplist and 3. commits that to a repository on Github or such, and the script could be rerun every two weeks or so? It seems like there are no terms of use attached to any of these two services that forbid this, but does anybody know?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Theoretically, you could do it in real-time and cache it.

    I think it would be important to check the API rules of w/e service you're using.

    https://www.enjen.net/asn-blocklist/readme.php#api

    Some CDNs I believe can already do it like cloudflare. But I havn't tested it myself, but I have seen ASN block pages through them in the past.

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