Protection from the email extractors

[_Chris_]

How do you protect your forum from the email extractors please ?

[topdown]

Enable
Users send e-mail via board:
Instead of showing the users e-mail address users are able to send e-mails via the board.

In the ACP -> Email Settings

[_Chris_]

Thanks topdown, but how would you stop someone sending in an email extraction bot, from an external source ?

[Sniper_E]

Chris, if you go to ACP / Users and Groups / Groups permission / select Bots / you will see all permissions set to No

Bots do not have permission to send e-mail and should be blocked from seeing the e-mail link....
along with being blocked from seeing a lot of things on your site.

[_Chris_]

This isn't to stop them sending from the forums, it's to stop them collecting email address's from the forums.

[Sniper_E]

Yes it is. It stops them from sending e-mail trough the forum.

topdown showed you how to enable e-mail to be sent through the forum.
That will keep even registered users from getting another user's e-mail address.
If you e-mail someone through the forum and they e-mail you back, then you both have each others e-mail address.

Bots can not get anyone's e-mail address, they can not even send e-mail to anyone.
phpBB has a lot of blocks setup for bots. Bots are very limited to what they can see and do.
There are even permissions in the ACP you can set to where bots can not see your forum at all.

[Hank the Cowdog]

Sniper, Chris is saying that he wants to stop Bots from going to his forum and collecting the E-Mail addresses of his users:

This isn't to stop them from sending from the forums, it's to stop them collecting email address's from the forums.

And Chris, Sniper is saying that Bots are already unable to see E-Mail addresses... and, like topdown suggested, enabling "Users send E-Mail via board" will make it so that users can't see the E-Mail addresses of anybody unless they send an E-Mail to another user and that user replies:

Yes it is. It stops them from sending e-mail trough the forum.

topdown showed you how to enable e-mail to be sent through the forum.
That will keep even registered users from getting another user's e-mail address.
If you e-mail someone through the forum and they e-mail you back, then you both have each others e-mail address.

Bots can not get anyone's e-mail address, they can not even send e-mail to anyone.
phpBB has a lot of blocks setup for bots. Bots are very limited to what they can see and do.
There are even permissions in the ACP you can set to where bots can not see your forum at all.

Hopefully that will clear up any confusion.

[_Chris_]

Thanks - yep, I am saying that I want to stop Bots from going to a forum and collecting the E-Mail addresses of the users.

There's some email extractors out there that can scour the forums for email address's, how do you stop them ?

[Hank the Cowdog]

There's some email extractors out there that can scour the forums for email address's, how do you stop them ?

In the case of E-Mail extractors that are registered users, you'd have to enable that 'Users send E-Mail via board" option previously mentioned. If that is enabled, the extractors' only available method of gathering E-Mail addresses is to send an E-Mail to someone and hope they reply.

There's also the 'Hide E-mail addresses' option in the E-mail settings... I'm assuming that makes it so that users cannot see addresses or communicate through e-mail at all.

[_Chris_]

It could also be for email extractors that are not users.