Is there a way to disable the ability for users to reply via email? I find that it disjoints discussions (their reply only shows up in email) and discourages actual interaction within the Discourse community. For example, if there is a public thread and someone replies via email…only the person they are directly replying to will receive the reply (via email…rather than in the public thread). Others will think that no one is interacting. An alternative solution would be allowing them to still reply via email, but also make all email replies show up in the associated Discourse community thread as well.

Search for reply by email enabled in the admin, but… [image] David_Kwan: there is a public thread and someone replies via email…only the person they are directly replying to will receive the reply (via email…rather than in the public thread). this is not how it’s supposed to work. When the setup is correct, replies by email are threaded into the Discourse topic just like those made via browser.

Thanks @omarfilip ! @pfaffman any ideas on how we can go about getting this fixed based on the initial installation?

See these #howto topics and check that your setup is correct: [image] Set up reply by email with POP3 polling Self-Hosting So you’d like to set up reply via email support for your Discourse forum. mega Reply via email is pre-configured and enabled by default on all discourse.org hosted sites. The guide below only applies to those self-hosting. Good news! Unlike outgoing email, which is completely unsuitable for typical consumer mail services like GMail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc, incoming reply via-email tends to be extremely low volume. Unless you have a truly massive forum with a zillion people replying to no… [image] Troubleshoot reply by email Self-Hosting If your Discourse does not have incoming email set up, see these topics: Set up reply by email with POP3 polling Configure direct-delivery incoming email for self-hosted sites with Mail-Receiver information_source If you already have basic reply via email set up (which is common on hosting plans), and you want to add the ability to start a new topic via email, see this topic. Logging and Errors All incoming emails are logged and are visible in your admin panel at /admin/email/received.…

[image] David_Kwan: For example, if there is a public thread and someone replies via email…only the person they are directly replying to will receive the reply (via email…rather than in the public thread) I don’t know how that could be true, as Discourse doesn’t reveal email addresses. The more common complaint is that people reply to a message from Discourse thinking that it’s going to one person and it goes to the forum.

Hmm, I looked into it and it seems that it’s allowing them to reply indirectly via our company email associated with Discourse email notifications…so it always says the sender is followed by our company email. @omarfilip do you see any downsides to disabling this? Will it still show the “Visit Message” button for them to visit the community to respond? [image] omarfilip: reply by email enabled

Ah, so they see the email notification, and then manually edit the reply-to with the person’s actual email because they know it? Perhaps you should turn on private email (Don’t include content from posts or topics in emails for extra privacy.) Then they’d have to visit discourse to see what it said.

Wouldn’t VERP change the email address of the recipient?

My guess is that they are replying directly via email by manually editing the To: line after they hit reply. This is only possible because they know the user’s email address (since they’re in the same company). It’s the only explanation I can think of for how they are able to reply directly to users. So if I’m right, VERP don’t matter.

[image] pfaffman: My guess is that they are replying directly via email by manually editing the To: line after they hit reply. This is only possible because they know the user’s email address (since they’re in the same company). It’s the only explanation I can think of for how they are able to reply directly to users. I don’t think that’s the case. The people who are reply via email notifications aren’t part of our company and I don’t think they are editing the To Line. I think that the company email is being used to send all email notifications (from user to user, us to user) and any replies to those email notifications are redirected by our company email…back to the person who caused the notification (s knowing a user’s email is not necessary to communicate with them via email notifications).

Sounds like you have a bum install, to me. If you don’t want “accidental” replies to go anywhere be sure you specify an inactive do-not-reply@forum.example.com return email address in your site settings.

Disable Reply Via Email

Product Support

omarfilip January 25, 2019, 7:02pm 4

See these howto topics and check that your setup is correct:

Topic		Replies	Views
How can I enable "reply to this email to respond" Product Support	2	2202	December 29, 2016
Email notifications reply directly to me (the admin) Product Support	3	1764	June 23, 2021
Disable reply via email? Product Support	4	1264	August 16, 2020
Reply by email Issues Product Support	5	1074	July 20, 2026
Re: Restrict Topic Replies to Topic Owner only Feature	5	1277	February 19, 2021

Disable Reply Via Email

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