# Restrict who you can PM based on Groups

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/restrict-who-you-can-pm-based-on-groups/74531>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Tags:** groups, personal-messages\
**Created:** [2017 年11 月 21 日 17:35 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/restrict-who-you-can-pm-based-on-groups/74531 "2017-11-21T17:35:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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作者： ![Valya\_Barboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/977dab/32.png) [@Valya\_Barboy](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Valya_Barboy)\
发布日期： [2017 年11 月 21 日 17:35 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/restrict-who-you-can-pm-based-on-groups/74531/1 "2017-11-21T17:35:32Z")

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Hi Discourse Community!

We’re using groups and categories to restrict what users can see/which forums they can participate in. This is mostly for privacy reasons/so that people aren’t inundated with topics that do not apply to them.

However, we’ve noticed that when you @mention people, or when you private message them, you can actually tag (or reach out to) any user on the platform. With the @mention, you get a warning saying that you’re mentioning someone who doesn’t have access, which is super helpful. However, for private messages, it’s very hard to find the correct person to reach out to. Often people have very similar names/usernames, and we’ve had problems of people messaging the wrong person without realizing it.

We were wondering if you have a solution for this use case. Our idea was to restrict who you can PM, allowing only staff + people in the same groups as you. Is this possible? Is there a different/better work around?

Thank you!

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/restrict-who-you-can-pm-based-on-groups/74531)._