XF 2.2 What are these greyed out users?

[bennylava]

I'm trying to figure out what is going on with these users. As you can see in the pic, some are greyed out. They also have weird looking email addresses (to me at least).

And when you click on them and go to the "Edit User" page, their user state says "Awaiting approval". That would seem to indicate that they can't do anything until I approve them manually. But RexMorgan was able to come onto the forum and post his bike for sale with no problems. I never approved him. Xenforo just let him right in, which is perfectly fine since he is real.

Is the program perhaps recognizing that these greyed users are fake? So it's blocking their ability to post?

 

[ENF]

It depends on your settings. People sent to an approval queue may be set by your spam settings. Each user is scored and if you have it set to manually approve people, that's where that's coming from. Unconfirmed emails will also cause the grey status in that list.

That the email address do luck suspicious.

For example:

Stop Forum Spam Domain Report for lumexmail.shop

stopforumspam.com

Stop Forum Spam Domain Report for topcompanygroup.com

stopforumspam.com

These would be flagged by StopFormSpam integration.

 

[Alvin63]

I usually find they are members that have been deleted - either by running the spam cleaner (ie spam ones from your site or manual approval queue) or ones you've deleted yourself. Or they may have registered but not been activated because their activation email bounced if it was a fake email address. So they may be registered but not activated. See if you recognise any as ones you've deleted. Someone else may know more detail. I just delete the greyed out ones from the user list, that I know I've deleted as spam. Some may be genuine users who haven't activated yet, but they're usually spam! And a genuine user would probably contact you by email and say they were having problems registering, or the activation email didn't arrive or something.

Test your emails are sending ok. Because I did once have an issue where activation emails weren't going out! So people couldn't activate.

 

[ENF]

I usually find they are members that have been deleted - either by running the spam cleaner (ie spam ones from your site or manual approval queue) or ones you've deleted yourself. See if you recognise any as ones you've deleted. Don't quote me on this but I think they are all deleted. Someone else may know more detail. I just delete the greyed out ones from the user list.

Deleted members wouldn’t show up at all. Only if they had orphaned posts on the site itself. Rejected members or those that are invalid would show up here and then can be batch deleted.

 

[Alvin63]

Thank you. I should have said rejected rather than deleted (ie via the spam cleaner?)

 

[ENF]

Thank you. I should have said rejected rather than deleted (ie via the spam cleaner?)

Well, that depends on your policy on account handling. If the account doesn’t have any posts or they are confirmed spam, we just delete wholly.

 

[bennylava]

It depends on your settings. People sent to an approval queue may be set by your spam settings. Each user is scored and if you have it set to manually approve people, that's where that's coming from. Unconfirmed emails will also cause the grey status in that list.

That the email address do luck suspicious.

For example:

Stop Forum Spam Domain Report for lumexmail.shop

stopforumspam.com

Stop Forum Spam Domain Report for topcompanygroup.com

stopforumspam.com

These would be flagged by StopFormSpam integration.

So they still appear on the list, even if they're flagged by StopForumSpam? I did set up SFS, as per the recommendations here. That's somewhat uncool, it would be much more useful to us if we never saw them at all. Don't really need known spam clogging up the list.

But that's all good to know, thank you for the reply.

Maybe it's difficult to really tell who's who? So it just lets them be on the list.

 

[ENF]

So they still appear on the list, even if they're flagged by StopForumSpam? I did set up SFS, as per the recommendations here. That's somewhat uncool, it would be much more useful to us if we never saw them at all. Don't really need known spam clogging up the list.

But that's all good to know, thank you for the reply.

Maybe it's difficult to really tell who's who? So it just lets them be on the list.

So long as the accounts exists on the site, the search results will pull those accounts, banned, invalid, valid or whatever. The only way to remove them completely is to delete the accounts.

 

[GrnEyedDvl]

They could be users who have chosen not to show themselves as online. You can still see them as an admin. It depends if you have made any style changes or not related to user display. I will check my site and see if any "hidden" users are online and show you what I mean.

Ok I have one member online who has chosen to not show his online status. I blacked otu part of his name, but this is what he looks like in the list.




And looking him up in the admincp his privacy settings are like this.

 

[ENF]

They could be users who have chosen not to show themselves as online. You can still see them as an admin. It depends if you have made any style changes or not related to user display. I will check my site and see if any "hidden" users are online and show you what I mean.

The display he was showing is the user search panel in the ACP. The online status where someone is hidden on the screen you posted, has no impact on what the greyed out names mean in the ACP user search. They are separate functions and meanings.

 

[GrnEyedDvl]

I just see a big nothing on the image he posted so I was not sure where he was talking about.

 

[ENF]

I just see a big nothing on the image he posted so I was not sure where he was talking about.

Yeah, you have to click on the image/link in the original post.

 

[GrnEyedDvl]

Yeah, you have to click on the image/link in the original post.

Yeah I saw that, but it just looks like a failed hotlink so I didn't bother. You are right I should have. Lots of places deny hotlinking so when I see that big red X...

 

[bennylava]

<a target="_blank" href="https://imageshack.com/i/pmywDDL0p"><img src="https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/640x480q70/922/ywDDL0.png" border="0"></a>

Are you guys seeing a red x when I try to link that image from imageshack? Need to find out if it's their fault.

 

[bennylava]

Also if you guys know a better one than ImageShack, even if it's paid, I would appreciate any recommendation. It's vital to have one in this business. Thanks!

 

[ENF]

Also if you guys know a better one than ImageShack, even if it's paid, I would appreciate any recommendation. It's vital to have one in this business. Thanks!

At least here, you can just attach images instead of hot-linking them. And yeah, we’re not seeing the images you linked unless we click on the link to open it.

 

[bennylava]

At least here, you can just attach images instead of hot-linking them. And yeah, we’re not seeing the images you linked unless we click on the link to open it.

But as for email addresses, this site says this greyed out email is ok:

Email Checker - Verify Email Address Online

Email Checker is a free email verification tool. It helps you validate any email address online for free. Check if mailbox really exists.

email-checker.net

Perplexity says the email is from Poland and is coming from a known spam outlet - keapkiir@gazeta.pl

So what do you guys do? Just give the greyed out email addresses 1 week, and then delete the account?

 

[Alvin63]

If it's a registration that has not been validated (because it bounced or because you spam cleaned it). Then I delete them straight away. If it's a registration that you haven't spam cleaned, and you haven't had a bounced registration email, then they have just not validated for some reason (probably because they're not a genuine user or a bot). Then you could leave it for a while and delete when you're doing some housekeeping at some point.

If that email address is known spam then I'd just delete it, if it's not validated.

 

[bennylava]

If it's a registration that has not been validated (because it bounced or because you spam cleaned it). Then I delete them straight away. If it's a registration that you haven't spam cleaned, and you haven't had a bounced registration email, then they have just not validated for some reason (probably because they're not a genuine user or a bot). Then you could leave it for a while and delete when you're doing some housekeeping at some point.

If that email address is known spam then I'd just delete it, if it's not validated.

Some of them are gmail addresses, still greyed. I'm hesitant to delete anything from gmail, yahoo, or hotmail.

Isn't gmail known for being very good at stopping spam? So you would think they wouldn't have many people signing up and using gmail to spam or use bots. It's not easy to get a brand new gmail address anymore.

Makes me think those might be real users.

 

[Alvin63]

I've had a lot of fake gmail addresses. It might say gmail on the end but doesn't mean the email address is valid. If it isn't valid the regisration email will bounce. If it is valid, it could still be a human spammer. If you're not sure then just leave them greyed out But yes you can get spammers with gmail addresses. If one gets marked as spam they probably open a new one.