Extending the addon functionality to private messages is a welcome feature I believe. I mean users will not be able to PM until they are approved. I have had several instances where new users have abused the PM feature.

Thanks!

Vishal

It needs a bit explanation, i.e. what do you mean by "until they are approved". Where the user is approved and where it's not, in your point?

Maybe add an option, if the user doesn't have enough posts he can't use PM service. Something like that, Vishal?

IMO fighting with PM feature abuse is like fighting with your own shadow :). There's a "Report" link in PM so if someone finds the message offensive, s/he can always report it. Even if there's a restriction that a member could send a PM only after posting X messages, it doesn't help at all - because you end up with 10 useless messages on the public forum and the PM is still abused.

But in this case you could at least tell his/her IP address from those posts. If someone registers and send only PMs like "come to my site, it it better than this one", you have no chance to detect such a behavior.

You have ;-) for one of my customers I have programmed a very simple PM monitoring tool. It actually works like Forums Checker tool, it lists all messages sent since your last visit, then you check them out and come again. That way you can control everything which is sent via PM, but on some forums this could be quite heavy... and this is actually a "big brother" tool ;-)

Regarding banning the IPs: I think this is the way which has no effect... even not being a hacker, I know tens of tricks how to fake IP address.

Some lighter solutions, that would simply show users IP right after he/she was registered would be useful. It would not have to be connected to PMs at all.

E.g, in the profile admin and moderators would be able to see IP at the time of registration. This is actually what I am missing.

Here is how to save IP address during registration.

Yes, it saves it now, but does not display it in user profile for some reason. Please help:
https://www.minibb.com/forums/12_1784_1.html#msg31055

I meant until users (new users) are approved through premod addon.

Yes true there's a report link in PM but till the user has been reported, he/she might have sent tens of PMs.

The Premod addon does an excellent work of pre-approving new users. However, unapproved users can still send PMs.

People who are here to spam, simply don't have time to post anything worthwhile. They simply post spam and vanish. It's almost like a formula and it works the same way most of the time.

I know you can't prevent abuse altogether but by preventing new users from making PMs until they are approved (through Premod addon), you can at least prevent outright abuse.

Vishal
I understand you and I will try to improve PM add-on in the new year so it takes into attention the status of unapproved user. I will put that in my TODO list.