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.

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.

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.

For example, if a visitor is blocked after reaching the number of offenses (Offense Limit) and your Auto Block Expiration interval is set to 1 hour, here’s what happens:

If that same visitor tries to access your site again within that hour, Shield updates their last access time and restarts the countdown. They must wait at least 1 hour and 1 second after their last attempt before they can access your site again.

You can find this option under Security Zones > Bots & IPs zone > click Configure (gear icon) next to Automatic IP Blocking component > Auto Blocking Rules tab > Auto Block Expiration.

From there, choose how long Shield should keep blocked IPs before automatically removing them.

Access to Auto Block Expiration option.

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.