Why do I need to still approve users that I have invited?

[gordon_mrmoco (Gordon)]

Users to my forum can be invited or they can sign up and then I need to approve them.

Previously if I invited them, they would simply accept and that would be that.

Recently for some reason, even after I invited them, they show as a sign up to be reviewed and approved.

Why is that and how can I turn it off? I invited them so I don’t want to then again approve them separately.

Thanks

Gordon

[simonk (Simon King)]

This was changed for security reasons:

Staff-generated invites bypass the must_approve_users requirement

We’ve had a serious security issue with the invite system. I guess it’s easily reproducible. Our site is on invite-only. In addition, we have checked “must approve users” in the settings. One of our staff issued an invitation with a max use greater than 1, thus not restricted to one email in particular (example below). [2022-05-26 16_24_30-Profile - Wall-E - Helionauts] That invite link circulated, and people could register with it. Yet we expected that when “must approve users” is checked …

There’s currently no workaround:

Allow users invited by staff to skip approval

Yeah … long term solution I guess is to add a site setting that allows for the relaxed approval mode I guess, opt in. I worry though cause getting security right here is very very hard. The more edge cases we allow for, the more complexity and potential security flaws.

[gordon_mrmoco (Gordon)]

Thanks very much for the info!