A suggestion to ward of scammers

[MT_PLS]

I have been getting a decent amount of PMs from users with one post, all related to items posted in the classifieds section. All of them asking me to email them at such and such address (all different) or to email their friend for the part for sale/wanted. A few I have reported, but most I just delete.
To lessen these spam PMs, is there a way to require a minimum number of posts before PMs are allowed? I would think a 10 posts minimum would take care of 99% of these issues.
Mike

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

@Jim Oaks

 

[Brain75]

totally agreed, those would be terms I would have been happy to follow back when I started... heck I think I made it to 200 posts before I ever PM'd anyone.

 

[Jim Oaks]

Ok, there's no easy way to do this, but there is a work around.

I created a new user group called 'Forum Member'. All of the members were in a group called 'Registered'. After making 10 posts, the user is automatically promoted from the user group 'Registered' to the user group 'Forum Member'. The user group Registered does not have permissions to send private messages to people, the user group 'Forum Member' does.

This is either going to work, or a bunch of people are about to get pissed off because their forum permissions aren't working right.

 

[RobbieD]

I created a new user group called 'Forum Member'. All of the members were in a group called 'Registered'.

That sounds too high-society.

Can I just stay in the "Flunky" group?

 

[Jim Oaks]

Who says you're not?

 

[MT_PLS]

Thanks @Jim Oaks . Hopefully this didn't/doesn't create a bunch of headaches for you.

 

[JoshT]

Ok, there's no easy way to do this, but there is a work around.

I created a new user group called 'Forum Member'. All of the members were in a group called 'Registered'. After making 10 posts, the user is automatically promoted from the user group 'Registered' to the user group 'Forum Member'. The user group Registered does not have permissions to send private messages to people, the user group 'Forum Member' does.

This is either going to work, or a bunch of people are about to get pissed off because their forum permissions aren't working right.

Might cause some teething issues, but it sounds like a good move to me. Probably similar to what other forums do when they require a 10 or so minimum post count to PM, they just don't describe it the same way.

If I encounter issues that may be related, I'll pass them on and try not to get pissy about it.

10 sounds like a good number too. It's pretty easy for a scammer/spammer to hit 5 posts in no time. I think most of them probably get caught, or at least reported, before the make it to 10.

 

[SenorNoob]

IDK. Depends on how fast they are. I've seen spam posts 1 minute apart.

 

[JoshT]

I've seen spam posts 1 minute apart.

True, but most of the time when I've seen that there were only like 4-6 posts. Even if they did hit the magic 10 posts, their account is probably going to be nuked shortly after.