Any way to automatically flag topics and replies that include an email address or phone number?

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AI-generated summary

Curtis_Kephart seeks a way to automatically flag forum posts containing email addresses or phone numbers for moderation, without outright blocking them. They note legitimate uses (e.g., business profiles) but want to prevent accidental sharing of private contact info, suggesting human review after flagging via plugins or existing tools like “Needs approval” or Akismet. anon61128213 suggests using the Admin > Logs > Watched Words > Require Approval feature to flag common email domains or area codes as a workaround.

1

I’d like to follow-up on this discussion:

I work with a discourse forum. Although we don’t want to explicitly prevent people from posting an email address or phone number, we would like to explore flagging such instances before they are made visible.
Perhaps a plugin and/or via some configuration of the “Needs approval” or “Akismet” flagger?

Why not completely prevent it? I can think of many situations in which there are good reasons to post an email or phone number. Certainly in a user-profile where one would like to advertise their business or portfolio.
Why be wary? We’ve recently seen a case or two where people shared their personal email address when a private message would have been a much better path. There’s also a fear of people posting other people’s private contact info. A quick human review would sort these smoothly, I think.

I’ll pre-apologize if I’ve missed a feature, plugin or discussion about this topic already.

2

I guess you could go to Admin > Logs > Watched Words > Require Approval and enter some common @mailproviders and area codes.