[Solved] "New post" notifications where no new post has been made

[John_Ha]

Every day I am getting several notification emails of new posts in threads which have been inactive for years. The threads do not appear in New Posts.

For example, today I got

Hello John_Ha,

The topic "How to start OpenOffice with several often used files" received a new reply by j.bees144 since your last visit to "Apache OpenOffice
Community Forum". No more emails will be sent until you visit the topic.

If you want to view the newest post click the following link:

viewtopic.php?t=106067&e=1&view=unread#unread

If you want to view the topic, click the following link:
viewtopic.php?t=106067

If you want to view the forum, click the following link:
viewforum.php?f=106

If you no longer wish to watch this topic click the following link:

viewtopic.php?uid=24824&t=106067&unwatch=topic

--
Thanks, The Team!

The last post in the link was in September 2021!

[John_Ha]

Interesting!

The three emails I received today all say "received a new reply by j.bees144". They are as above and

Last post August 2022

Hello John_Ha,

The topic "A better autocorrect is really needed" received a new reply by j.bees144 since your last visit to "Apache OpenOffice Community Forum". No more emails will be sent until you visit the topic.

If you want to view the newest post click the following link:

viewtopic.php?t=108337&e=1&view=unread#unread

If you want to view the topic, click the following link:
viewtopic.php?t=108337

If you want to view the forum, click the following link:
viewforum.php?f=106

If you no longer wish to watch this topic click the following link:

viewtopic.php?uid=24824&t=108337&unwatch=topic

and

Last post July 2018

Hello John_Ha,

The topic "Giving up on Open Office (Impress/Draw)" received a new reply by j.bees144 since your last visit to "Apache OpenOffice Community Forum". No more emails will be sent until you visit the topic.

If you want to view the newest post click the following link:

viewtopic.php?t=94355&e=1&view=unread#unread

If you want to view the topic, click the following link:
viewtopic.php?t=94355

If you want to view the forum, click the following link:
viewforum.php?f=106

If you no longer wish to watch this topic click the following link:

viewtopic.php?uid=24824&t=94355&unwatch=topic

The only cause I can think of is that j.bees144 has posted a reply in the thread, which generates the notification; and then deleted the post.

[robleyd]

MrProgrammer banned that user around 17 hours ago, slightly over half an hour from when the account was activated; he also added a user warning

j.bees144 made half a dozen pointless posts "Thank you", "Love this app", "Good to know", …, then posted SPAM. None of the posts contributed to a solution for the the topic.

I can only guess that somehow the user bypassed the usual moderation of first post, hence you got notifications of new posts.

Oddly, I see no entries in the moderator logs for the deletion of those posts.

[John_Ha]

David

Thanks. That would explain it.

[RoryOF]

Also, sometimes I find that the marking of a thread "Solved" will cause a "new post" notification.

[Hagar Delest]

Oddly, I see no entries in the moderator logs for the deletion of those posts.

Weird indeed.
There are some disapproval that are correctly recorded in the Moderator log but not those for that user. It may have been done all at once with the moderation queue where you can select several posts and disapprove all of them. Perhaps in this case there is no log entry.

Also, sometimes I find that the marking of a thread "Solved" will cause a "new post" notification.

Weird also. Never saw that.

[RoryOF]

I should say that it is (my guess) the marking by someone else that seems to cause this - I have found no other alteration (no spam) in any of the threads involved.

There seem to be hidden backdoors in the phpBB code we use, as the occasional insertions of spam show, and also the occasional manifestations of postings from a User who has not been formally approved.

[MrProgrammer]

MrProgrammer banned that user around 17 hours ago

It may have been done all at once with the moderation queue where you can select several posts and disapprove all of them. Perhaps in this case there is no log entry.

After banning the user for SPAM I used this Quick tools option in the Administer User dialog. This seemed easier than splitting them all and moving the posts to the Deleted Topics queue, since none of the posts helped anyone. I suppose I could have moved them instead, but they were just junk.

DeleteAllPosts.gif (87.65 KiB) Viewed 5764 times

I can only guess that somehow the user bypassed the usual moderation of first post

That seemed to be the case. I had looked in the log but didn't see any entries for approval of j.bees144's first post. I've since executed Ban by Email and Ban by IP on j.bees144 to help ensure this person doesn't return after bypassing first-post moderation.

Getting "New post" notifications where no new post has been made

There was a new post, the email was sent, but the post was gone by the time you viewed the topic.

[Hagar Delest]

Thanks, I understand then that there was 2 factors here: first the posting without moderation approval and second the lack of record when the delete all posts is used.
Agreed, no need to have the posts split to have the "standard" record of what is done in such case.