The discussion revolves around whether the Akismet plugin scans posts created through incoming “anonymous” email. downey reported receiving typical spam emails via a private category that receives feedback email, and wants to know if Akismet can catch these.
codinghorror questioned whether the mail provider should be catching these spam emails, to which downey replied that their mail provider, Google Apps, is not catching enough of them.
It was suggested that the Akismet plugin could be improved by exposing a site setting to scan incoming emails or private messages (PMs). codinghorror mentioned that they previously stopped scanning PMs due to a high number of false positives.
DeanMarkTaylor suggested sending a custom comment_type to Akismet, such as “email,” to improve accuracy. codinghorror confirmed that they are using forum-post as the comment_type for existing content.
After further discussion, it was confirmed that posts created via “email in” are not scanned via Akismet. downey and codinghorror agreed that adding a site setting to scan incoming emails would be beneficial.
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.
Seems like an obvious catch for Akismet, which tends to err on the side of false positives.
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.
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”?)
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).
