What Is the Auto Block Expiration Option?
When using IP addresses to block unwanted visitors, those block lists need regular maintenance. Shield Security handles this automatically based on the time that has passed since a blocked IP last visited your site.
What Makes an IP Address “Old”
To keep IP address lookups fast and efficient, Shield automatically removes old IP entries from the block list. An IP address is considered “old” when the time since its last blocked access exceeds the period you set in the Auto Expire option.
Why Auto Expiration Improves Performance
Permanent or long-term IP blacklists can slow down your site. Allowing blocked IPs to expire automatically keeps your lists shorter and more efficient. This makes for a smarter and faster IP-based blocking system.
Where to Find and Configure This Option
You can find this option under the Shield main sidebar menu > Configure > Bots and IPs > Automatic IP Blocking.
From there, choose how long Shield should keep blocked IPs before automatically removing them.
How Auto Expire Works
For example, if a visitor is blocked after reaching the Offense Limit and your Auto Block Expiration is set to 1 hour, here is what happens:
Every time that visitor tries to access your site from the same IP within that hour, Shield updates their last access time and restarts the 1-hour countdown. The block only expires once a full hour passes with no access attempt. In practice, this means a persistent visitor can stay blocked indefinitely as long as they keep trying.
Blocked IP will show IP Block Status: Blocked (expires: xxxx minutes from now), along with the Last Seen and Date Added timestamps. This gives you a clear, real-time view of active blocks and how much time remains before each one expires automatically.
More information about the auto-expiration of black listed IP addresses can be found here.
Note: Bots & IPs Zone also gives you the ability to analyse and manage blacklisted and whitelisted IP addresses.