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

[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:

New users need approval despite being invited

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.