# Category not accepting "anonymous email" from known users

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-not-accepting-anonymous-email-from-known-users/42871>\
**Category:** Bug\
**Created:** [April 20, 2016, 12:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-not-accepting-anonymous-email-from-known-users/42871 "2016-04-20T12:13:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![dachary](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/dachary/32/119731_2.png) [@dachary](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dachary)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2021, 9:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-not-accepting-anonymous-email-from-known-users/42871/15 "2021-10-07T09:37:16Z")

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I believe the following patch (against the current **main** branch) could solve this issue by skipping validations when **email\_in\_allow\_strangers** is set for the category, in the same way it is skipped for staged users. Does that sound sensible?

```plaintext
diff --git a/lib/email/receiver.rb b/lib/email/receiver.rb
index 7c76c44d61..dd3bc3cfb0 100644
--- a/lib/email/receiver.rb
+++ b/lib/email/receiver.rb
@@ -762,7 +762,7 @@ module Email
                      elided: elided,
                      title: subject,
                      category: destination.id,
- skip_validations: user.staged?)
+ skip_validations: (user.staged? || destination.email_in_allow_strangers))
 
       elsif destination.is_a?(PostReplyKey)
         # We don't stage new users for emails to reply addresses, exit if user is nil

```

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