Black list and banned words

The Black list add-on remembers the spammers you’ve caught. Once a member is marked as spam, their email address can’t be used to post listings or contact anyone on your site again. It also turns away sign-ups from throwaway email services. Banned words works on content instead: it masks or refuses listings that contain words you choose.

How marking as spam works

You can mark someone as spam in two ways:

in All listings, mark one of their listings as spam (the poster is marked too), or
in Users, choose Mark as spam from the ⋯ menu on their row.

What happens next depends on whether the Black list is on:

	Black list off	Black list on
The account’s status	Spam	Spam
Signed in on your site	Signed out straight away, and can’t use the account	Same
Public profile	Hidden	Hidden
Posting a listing with that email address, even without signing in	Still possible	Refused
Sending messages or using contact forms with that email address	Still possible	Refused
Sign-ups and logins from disposable-email services	Allowed	Refused
Your Disallowed Email Domains list	Not applied	Applied
Posters whose listing Akismet flags	Listing refused	Listing refused and poster marked as spam

Administrators, moderators and translators can never be marked as spam.

Marking a member as spam doesn’t touch their existing listings. Mark those as spam too, or delete them, from All listings.

Turn the Black list on or off

New sites have it on. To check:

Go to Add-ons and open Black list.
Click Enable (if it shows Disable, it’s already on).

See and manage blacklisted members

The Black list page lists every member marked as spam, with their name and email address. The same members are in the Spam tab on the Users page.

To give someone a second chance, click Delete next to them on the Black list page. Despite the name, this doesn’t delete the member: it removes them from the black list and sets their account back to Active. You can also set their Status to Active on their page in Users.

Banned words

Banned words catch spam by its content: the payment scams, gambling links and miracle cures that keep coming back with new accounts. You’ll find them in Listings › Settings, in the Banned words section.

In Banned Words, type the words or phrases to catch, separated by commas: western union,casino,moneygram.
In Banned Words Replacement, type what to show instead, for example ***.
Switch on Validate Banned Words to refuse new listings that contain a banned word, instead of masking it.
Click Save changes.

Setting	What it does
Banned Words	The words and phrases to catch, separated by commas. Matching ignores upper and lower case.
Banned Words Replacement	Replaces each banned word in listing titles and descriptions, and in forum posts, when they’re saved.
Validate Banned Words	Refuses a new listing (and a new forum topic) whose title or description contains a banned word, so the poster has to change it.
Banned Words Among Each Word	Also replaces banned words found inside longer words. Without it, only whole words are replaced.

Things to know

Replacement applies when a listing is posted or edited; listings already on your site are only changed the next time they’re saved.
Validate Banned Words checks new listings only. Someone who edits a live listing to add a banned word gets it masked instead of refused.
The validation check is case-sensitive and also matches inside longer words: with cash banned, “cashmere” is refused but “Cash” isn’t. Add the common spellings of each word.
Be careful with Banned Words Among Each Word and short words: banning ass would also mask “class” and “glass”.
Don’t end the list with a comma, and avoid punctuation such as dots, brackets or slashes inside banned words: they can make the filter mask far more than you intended.

Fight spam — all the anti-spam tools together.
Manage users — statuses, spam and deleting accounts.
Sign-up and login settings — allowed and disallowed email domains.
Manage listings — mark listings as spam.