[RFC] Send Emails to banned or inactive accounts

[EXreaction]

Currently the system is setup to allow users to send emails to anyone who has an email address listed in their profile (including banned and deactivated accounts).

I believe this should be changed so that permanently banned and administrator deactivated users cannot receive emails from anyone but administrators and accounts that are not normal (bots, guest) should never be able to receive emails (even if someone fills one in for the profile).

I also think that, for the permanently banned and administrator deactivated accounts, the email address should be displayed to the users who will be able to email them, even if the board is set to send email through the board.

I've created a ticket here: http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-10980

I have a patch in progress, but need to know the functionality desired before I can complete it.

[DavidIQ]

This actually goes way back. This ticket should give you some other tickets that are related:
http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-7178

I have a client that has had trouble with this as well. I'm going to have to hack up the memberlist.php code to get it to return inactive users on searches on his current 3.0.x installation.

A +1 from me on this of course. I think that perhaps showing the inactive users with maybe (Inactive) next to their username when administrators (or users with a_user permission?) conduct searches will be enough to provide this client with what they need to see. Maybe the same can be considered here or something more elegant could be done.

[EXreaction]

I don't see how the two are related, this is about sending emails to accounts that have been deactivated or banned, not searching for them by an email address.

[DavidIQ]

Was thinking one thing while searching for another. The whole massmail thing is also a sticking point for that client I spoke about...

What has been suggested in the past is to give administrators the option to exclude banned and/or inactive (on purpose or not) members through an options list in the mass email section of the ACP or a series of checkboxes. I don't think regular users should be able to send mass mails to these users at all though even though some administrators actually allow this...

[jsebean]

Currently the system is setup to allow users to send emails to anyone who has an email address listed in their profile (including banned and deactivated accounts).

I believe this should be changed so that permanently banned and administrator deactivated users cannot receive emails from anyone but administrators and accounts that are not normal (bots, guest) should never be able to receive emails (even if someone fills one in for the profile).

I also think that, for the permanently banned and administrator deactivated accounts, the email address should be displayed to the users who will be able to email them, even if the board is set to send email through the board.

I've created a ticket here: http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-10980

I have a patch in progress, but need to know the functionality desired before I can complete it.

+1 for this totally, I've had a particular user one time ticked off for getting emails when they were banned.

Maybe this should be disallowed for those banned, permanently or not. Users are suspicious if they know someone gets banned, I get that way myself, but really there is no reason why the banned should get any messages, only when they're not banned.

[naderman]

Agree with everything except displaying email addresses to anyone other than administrators if email through board is typically used. As that would expose their private information without their knowledge.

[EXreaction]

Yes, part of this is who should see the email addresses if they are displayed? Should it just be a_, or m_, or something specific?