# Tips for Preventing Spam

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/tips-for-preventing-spam/264020
**Category:** Site Management
**Tags:** moderation, explanation, spam
**Created:** [May 5, 2023, 9:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tips-for-preventing-spam/264020 "2023-05-05T21:38:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![RGJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rgj/32/523185_2.png) [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2024, 11:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tips-for-preventing-spam/264020/3 "2024-05-16T11:06:07Z")

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> [@SaraDev](#):
>
> [Watched Words](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watched-words-reference-guide/241735) are another great feature for helping block or limit posts that contain words, phrases, or URL links that spammers might be repeatedly using.

One very useful regular expression is `\d{3}-\d{4}|[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-]+(\.[a-z\d\-]+)*\.[a-z]+` which blocks email addresses and phone numbers. Don’t forget to enable settings - posting - “watched words regular expressions”.

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