Can we turn off emails to deleted users and stop contacting our spammers?

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Our Discourse is set to approve post count = 1

We use this to protect against spam as the first post from every new user requires moderator approval.

When a spam post is made and caught with this setting, we reject the post and delete the user with a single click:

This works great and protects our community members from ever seeing a single spam post

However, when we “Delete User”, Discourse unfortunately then emails that deleted user to tell them they were deleted.

We’d very much like to not be contacting our spammers

Can we turn this email notification off somehow?

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

The issue there being someone on a mission now knows they’ve been deleted so they sign up and try again

Here’s the email the deleted spammer gets sent:

Related: Ruby hash syntax being displayed in emails sent to deleted users

[Moin]

I don’t think the pull request that added the feature included a setting to turn it off.

FEATURE: send email to deleted user

I currently delete the user from their admin profile page instead of from the review queue. That seems to prevent the email.

[manuel (Manuel Kostka)]

When you select “Delete and Block User”, shouldn’t that disable the email right away?

[Moin]

No, it doesn’t. It also emails the user that their account was deleted. There is no difference between deleting with blocking and deleting without blocking.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Moin

I currently delete the user from their admin profile page instead of from the review queue. That seems to prevent the email.

Interesting workaround, a few extra steps for our moderators though

I’m also not sure if they have permission to delete a user, I’d need to check that.

@Moin

I don’t think the pull request that added the feature included a setting to turn it off.

That’s disappointing, I really don’t want to be sending emails our spammers

[Moin]

@Richie

a few extra steps for our moderators though

I click on the avatar in the review queue, click on the name in the user card to open the profile, and use the delete button on the right.
The really annoying part is that you still have to reject the post in the review queue.

[hugh (Hugh Lashbrooke)]

Thanks for raising this, @Richie.

@Richie

However, when we “Delete User”, Discourse unfortunately then emails that deleted user to tell them they were deleted.

For some context, we added the feature to email deleted users earlier this year as it is a requirement for compliance with the Digital Services Act where all users need to be notified about changes to their account, including deletion.

To help admins who would rather not have this happen, we’re busy working on a feature that will allow individual email templates to be disabled so they never send to anyone. This will be able to be done per email from the email templates page in the admin.

We’ll circle back to this topic once that feature has been completed and merged.

[Rubi]

@hugh

all users need to be notified about changes to their account, including deletion.

Does this also apply to the method described above by @Moin ?

I tested this with two tabs open, one with the flagged post in the Review Queue and another with the user profile.

Interestingly, when I clicked Delete on the right side of the profile it also immediately resolved the flag and there was no need to take further action in the Review Queue.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Our Discourse informing persistent trolls and spammers that we’ve just deleted their account simply instructs them to come right back and sign up again

@hugh

To help admins who would rather not have this happen, we’re busy working on a feature that will allow individual email templates to be disabled so they never send to anyone.

The law / act you linked to does not apply to a lot of countries so being able to disable these emails in the future is excellent news, thank you

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

Alternatively, what about silencing them? They should have no posts and be (unless you changed the default settings) trust level 0, so their account will cause no harm. They won’t even appear in the user directory and will be purged periodically with the CleanUpInactiveUsers Sidekiq job (default value: 2 years).

Tho I guess that this automatic deletion will also send an email when it occurs then?

But I doubt spammers will use the same email address for 2 years…

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Canapin

what about silencing them?

That sends them an email to say they’ve been silenced.