Setting for scan email-in posts with Akismet

Feature
1

Does the Akismet plugin scan posts that are processed via incoming “anonymous” email that stages an account for that user? If not, can that happen somehow?

We’ve gotten a lot of typical looking spam (invoice due, etc.) in the past week. We have a private category that receives this feedback email so while it’s not a huge impact, people watching that category are getting Discourse-based spam email notifications. :frowning:

Seems like an obvious catch for Akismet, which tends to err on the side of false positives.

2

Hmm is your mail provider not catching these? Email is viewed as something of a protected endpoint…

3

Incoming through Google Apps, and no it’s not catching (enough of) them. Of course I also get similar messages in my own Gmail accounts several times per week.

Is there any value in skipping them?

4

We had a LOT of false Akismet positives on PMs. A lot. That’s why we stopped doing it.

5

Hmm. Don’t know what the code looks like, but any chance of exposing this as a site setting for the plugin? (Maybe something like “scan incoming emails” or maybe also “scan messages”?)

3 Likes
6

Yeah as a site / plugin setting I can support it cc @eviltrout

4 Likes
7

If you haven’t already consider sending a custom comment_type to Akismet, perhaps “email”.

4 Likes
8

Hmm good info, thanks! :bow:

@eviltrout can we confirm we’re using forum-post as the comment_type for the existing stuff?

9

This is a good idea, but I wonder if the content_type should be email for all PM’s (web or email in), while email-to-post should still be forum-post (since that’s the type of content it would be).

10

I guess it also depends on more factors:

  • Is the target mail address a group
  • or a reply targeting the traditional forum topics
  • Is the content sent to Akismet the raw original email (with footers etc)
  • or the processed post.

Can enough information be inferred to define a comment_type - perhaps.

2 Likes
11

We are indeed :wink:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse-akismet/blob/master/lib/discourse_akismet.rb#L38

3 Likes
12

So, back to the original question.

Are posts created via email in scanned via Akismet?

1 Like