XF 2.2 What happens when you use restore a spam-cleaned user?

[JackieChun]

I have a Spam cleaner log going back almost 10 years, and all the usernames on the list are still in blue (i.e. clickable). Most of these users were bots that posted hundreds of spam messages. I had no idea the "Restore" feature existed and just discovered it now. Does restoring just unban the spammer or does it restore their content? All that spam content these users posted many years ago can't possibly still be in the database, can it?

I was under the impression that spam content got purged forever and thus prevented unnecessary bloat of the database.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Yes it restores content as well as user, but only if you have the spam cleaner in options set to soft delete (default)

If you set to permantly delete threads and messages then that's it. Gone.

 

[JackieChun]

So what happens when you click restore if your spam cleaner has been deleting messages permanently? Is unbanning the only thing that takes place? I guess that's another way of asking what makes a user marked as a spammer different from a banned user.

 

[TPerry]

user marked as a spammer different from a banned user.

One thing that I am aware of is if you mark them as a spammer (via the spam cleaner) and have this option enabled in the ACP, it will submit them to the database if you have a StopForumSpam API key entered.



Banning them does not do that.

 

[Mr Lucky]

AFAIK the user is not marked as a spammer apart from the ban reason which would be the phrase spam_cleaner_ban_reason.

Once you unban someone I don't think the ban reason is viewable. The record of them having been spam cleaned will exist in the moderator log and the spam cleaner log.

I guess that's another way of asking what makes a user marked as a spammer

I'm not sure what is meant by "marked as a spammer." You could do that yourself via a usergroup but I don't think the spam cleaner does that beyond the ban reason as I mentioned above.

 

[TPerry]

"marked as a spammer."

Probably referring to the using the spam cleaner on them.

 

[JackieChun]

AFAIK the user is not marked as a spammer apart from the ban reason which would be the phrase spam_cleaner_ban_reason.

Once you unban someone I don't think the ban reason is viewable. The record of them having been spam cleaned will exist in the moderator log and the spam cleaner log.


I'm not sure what is meant by "marked as a spammer." You could do that yourself via a usergroup but I don't think the spam cleaner does that beyond the ban reason as I mentioned above.

Thank you, this is helpful. I want to identify all users who have been spam-cleaned and purge them once in a while. I think that's a valid practice. You can't search by "ban reason" in the admin panel, which means once a spambot's pending registration has been "spam-cleaned," his account status changes to 'Valid', plus a 'Banned' flag gets added. That makes it impossible to separate these accounts from users that were banned for other (non-spam) reasons.

Which actually brings up a question. Why does spam-cleaning a pending registration change the user's status to 'Valid' instead of 'Rejected'? Seems like 'Rejected' is where they belong, and that would make searching for them later possible. @Chris D any thoughts?

 

[Mr Lucky]

Thank you, this is helpful. I want to identify all users who have been spam-cleaned and purge them once in a while. I think that's a valid practice. You can't search by "ban reason" in the admin panel, which means once a spambot's pending registration has been "spam-cleaned," his account status changes to 'Valid', plus a 'Banned' flag gets added. That makes it impossible to separate these accounts from users that were banned for other (non-spam) reasons.

At least you you can either see them all in the spam cleaner log or in the database table xf_spam_cleaner_log

 

[JackieChun]

@Mr Lucky Yeah, I figured they were in the tables somewhere. Being able to search for them from admincp and mark for batch-processing would go a long way.

 

[Mr Lucky]

@Mr Lucky Yeah, I figured they were in the tables somewhere. Being able to search for them from admincp and mark for batch-processing would go a long way.

From ACP you can copy and paste to a spreadsheet but limited to 20 per page. If there are loads export to CSV from the database table.