Mass Deletion of Spam Accounts

[Como]

Hi,

I need to delete a huge number of spam accounts. At our old website, they were contained with some unique measures. But I now have to deal with them at IPS.

I intend to delete all zero-post accounts older than six months. But before I do this, I wish to double-check my settings. I am new to IPS - I need to be sure of not messing this up!

I assume that I:

1. Ignore everything above the 'Joined' parameter
2. Select a suitable date range in 'Joined'
3. Posts: Exactly | 0
4. 'Allow bulk emails?' Do I set this to 'either'?

I then ignored the 'Converter' section.

Then 'Search'

I assume I now select 'Prune all members found' - yes?

I just need someone from the team here to confirm my parameters 1-4 before I prune the accounts.

Oh. And is there a upper limit of accounts I should 'prune' in one go (in Cloud)?

Thanks.

[Como]

Thank you @SeNioR- But I think I'll wait for a nod from one of the IPS team. I am a bit hesitant about deleting thousands of accounts. It seems straightforward enough, but me being new to this system, I just wish to be 100% certain.

[Jim M]

1 hour ago, Como said:

• Ignore everything above the 'Joined' parameter
• Select a suitable date range in 'Joined'
• Posts: Exactly | 0
• 'Allow bulk emails?' Do I set this to 'either'?

You would just need to set the join date range you wish to have and posts exactly 0. The other settings are not needed if that is only what you want to search by. Yes, leave bulk emails on either because that would make this independent of their selection there.

1 hour ago, Como said:

I then ignored the 'Converter' section.

Keep in mind if you're under the "All" section, this would include all users.

[Como]

Hi Jim.

'All' section? Sorry, I don't follow. Where?

[Miss_B]

1 hour ago, Como said:

But I think I'll wait for a nod from one of the IPS team. I am a bit hesitant about deleting thousands of accounts. It seems straightforward enough, but me being new to this system, I just wish to be 100% certain.

A word of advice, if I may. Don't forget to make first a full and thorough backup of the database before you make edits to it, or modify it. Like that you can always roll back if things will not go as planned.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Miss_B

[Como]

Hi @Miss_B

Thanks for the heads-up. But as we are using cloud, unless I am mistaken, there is no way for me to take a backup. I understand I can request one, but that's probably slow. And I can't do that every time I make a change.

[Jim M]

28 minutes ago, Como said:

Hi Jim.

'All' section? Sorry, I don't follow. Where?

All is the default section when loading the members page:

[Como]

Hi Jim,

But that what I want (I think). We had a system where members were forced to introduce themselves to a 'forum' they were not programmed to recognise. Once the their first post was approved, they could then post freely. But, (potential) spammers were never in a specific group - they were just zero-post count members.

So, my intention is to delete all zero-count accounts created more than six months ago. Because of the way forum operated, members (like guests) had a very restricted view of the forum. So, any genuine zero-post accounts caught up in the deletion have lost nothing (no posts, no PMs, no search privileges, and no account with provided anything better the guest view).

So, I just need to know if my parameters are correct. I am 99.9% sure they are. But the consequences for getting it wrong is large I thought it best to check. 🙂

Further, how many accounts can safely delete in one go? The numbers are huge!

[Miss_B]

31 minutes ago, Como said:

Hi @Miss_B

Thanks for the heads-up. But as we are using cloud, unless I am mistaken, there is no way for me to take a backup. I understand I can request one, but that's probably slow. And I can't do that every time I make a change.

I didn't know that you are using cloud. In that case you have nothing to worry about. You don't need to do a backup as your site data is in very safe and capable hands. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Miss_B

[Jim M]

24 minutes ago, Como said:

Hi Jim,

But that what I want (I think). We had a system where members were forced to introduce themselves to a 'forum' they were not programmed to recognise. Once the their first post was approved, they could then post freely. But, (potential) spammers were never in a specific group - they were just zero-post count members.

So, my intention is to delete all zero-count accounts created more than six months ago. Because of the way forum operated, members (like guests) had a very restricted view of the forum. So, any genuine zero-post accounts caught up in the deletion have lost nothing (no posts, no PMs, no search privileges, and no account with provided anything better the guest view).

So, I just need to know if my parameters are correct. I am 99.9% sure they are. But the consequences for getting it wrong is large I thought it best to check. 🙂

Further, how many accounts can safely delete in one go? The numbers are huge!

I just wanted to ensure this as such. If you're intending to do this in all then you should be good to go. 

I always recommend doing a test to ensure you get what you want out of your search but other than that you should be all set. The system can handle large amount due to converting it to a background task. 

[Como]

Thanks, Jim. Oh. I just emailed about the domain name. 🙂

[Como]

It is going to take 4 days or more for membership pruning to complete. I don't suppose there is a way to speed up batch processing?

[Marc Stridgen]

There is no way in which to speed this up. The intention there is that its run in the background 

[Como]

'Tis as I assumed. But thank you for the confirmation.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Como

[KenuFHR]

On 7/24/2023 at 10:57 AM, Marc Stridgen said:

There is no way in which to speed this up. The intention there is that its run in the background 

Hi Marc,

Does this also apply to moving to a different user group? For some reason only 50 members at a time get moved, even though it asks and I confirm the moving of about 1200 members to the user group.

Ideally - from my perspective - there would be a way to multi-select members via checkboxes and remove or move the ones you have checked. I can imagine you could cause a lot of harm to yourself as an admin if you don't know what you're doing, but currently removing a lot of invalidated users (I assume CAPTCHA blocked registrations) seems to be a very slow process, unless I'm missing something.

I just learned about the mass-pruning through the search result, which seems useful, but I would like to have an extra step to actually manually review what I'm removing, so I figured I'd mass-move all of the invalidated users to a temporary group first and then review the users in that group before running the mass-prune. 

[Marc Stridgen]

On 7/28/2023 at 11:12 PM, KenuFHR said:

Does this also apply to moving to a different user group? For some reason only 50 members at a time get moved, even though it asks and I confirm the moving of about 1200 members to the user group.

Both actions would do the same, yes

[KenuFHR]

On 7/31/2023 at 9:54 AM, Marc Stridgen said:

Both actions would do the same, yes

Thanks for the response. I can confirm that only the initial 50 members were copied. Weird, as it asks for 1200 to be moved, I say yes, and as a result 50 get moved. Two days later, no progress.

Still better than removing one at a time, but just trying to understand if there's anything I can do better here. 🙂 

[Jim M]

7 minutes ago, KenuFHR said:

Thanks for the response. I can confirm that only the initial 50 members were copied. Weird, as it asks for 1200 to be moved, I say yes, and as a result 50 get moved. Two days later, no progress.

Still better than removing one at a time, but just trying to understand if there's anything I can do better here. 🙂 

There are no background tasks on your community so the process is done. You may wish to double check the process you performed and the process completed.

[KenuFHR]

Just now, Jim M said:

There are no background tasks on your community so the process is done. You may wish to double check the process you performed and the process completed.

Thanks for checking @Jim M. How would I double-check the process - if you mean there are actual analytics I can look into?

[Jim M]

5 minutes ago, KenuFHR said:

Thanks for checking @Jim M. How would I double-check the process - if you mean there are actual analytics I can look into?

You would rerun the search and prune that you did prior.

[KenuFHR]

13 minutes ago, Jim M said:

You would rerun the search and prune that you did prior.

Ok, I tried that (except move instead of prune) and I'll send you a link to a recording of that via DM, if you could confirm I'm doing something wrong or not. 🙂 

 

Edit: Never mind, I'm not allowed to send you private messages. 😬

Should I approach support? Due to the private information shown in the video, I don't want to post it publicly.

Edited August 1, 2023 by KenuFHR

[Jim M]

You can put any links to video or support evidence in the notes section of the Client Area for manage access details. This way, all our support techs have access to it.

[KenuFHR]

24 minutes ago, Jim M said:

You can put any links to video or support evidence in the notes section of the Client Area for manage access details. This way, all our support techs have access to it.

Thanks. Done.

[Jim M]

Double check your group promotion rules to ensure they are not undoing anything here. Additionally, I would disable all third party applications and plugins. You have a few which are outdated.