Flag users sending a large number of PMs

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In a discussion titled ‘Flag users sending a large number of PMs’ under the Feature category, Mollyvog proposes a system to automatically flag new users who send excessive private messages, citing an incident involving a romance scammer who sent many PMs before being caught by a watchword. Merefield suggests restricting PMs to users with Trust Level 1 or higher, sharing a screenshot of relevant settings, but Mollyvog counters that this wouldn’t have helped in their case, as the scammer actively engaged with the community and reached Trust Level 1 by participating in topics. Pmusaraj supports the feature request, noting its value not just for new users but also for detecting unusual behavior in established users — such as suddenly sending hundreds of PMs — to help protect admins. The conversation highlights the need for nuanced, behavior-based moderation tools that go beyond trust levels to detect suspicious messaging patterns.

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Hello

I am not sure if this feature already exists but if it does I can’t find it.

We had a scammer on our site who was caught by one of our watchwords. However before this, they had sent a large number of private messages to users. This wasn’t a bot - it looked to be a romance scammer. Most PMs didn’t have a reply, but one did and their reply contained a watchword.

Is there a way to automatically flag new users who send a large amount of PMs? We have established users who send a lot of PMs every day which is fine. But for a new user, sending say over 5 PMs would be very suspicious behaviour.

Thanks!

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The image shows a setting in an online group interface that allows administrators, moderators, and users with trust level 1 to create personal messages, with additional notes on messaging rules and group interaction settings. (Captioned by AI)
The image shows a setting in an online group interface that allows administrators, moderators, and users with trust level 1 to create personal messages, with additional notes on messaging rules and group interaction settings. (Captioned by AI)643×204 12.9 KB

There’s also this setting, which should be an immediate help?

I personally don’t think Trust Level 0 users should be able to send PMs and you might argue Trust Level 1 is too generous too …

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My community is for emotional support so new users would often message admins.

In this case restricting to trust level 1 and above wouldn’t have worked as they had clearly searched for certain types of posts to reply to the OPs via PM - they entered many topics and had spent a good while on the community doing so. So they passed trust level 0.

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I like this feature request, I think it’s valid even for older users. It would be good protection for admins to know that a user all of a sudden starts sending hundreds of PMs.

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