Hello I am admin and owner of a site hosted on the invision cloud and using the creator plan.

One of the very useful ways to catch scammers is being able to sign in as any member's account and view their message history. I have intercepted such messages and banned accounts in this manner before.

It is time consuming signing into members accounts individually and checking their messages, or indeed looking for private message sending in the IP address tools. What I would like is to be able to read every private message sent that day as a sort of newsfeed. Or something like that. It would make this all so much quicker, and easier to keep my users safe.

I have read that there is a pluggin for the forum called "PM viewer" or something like that on https://www.sosinvision.com.br

Before I even investigate making a modification or addition to the admin CP though I need to ask:

1: is the site a known and trusted source of pluggins? https://www.sosinvision.com.br/

this is especially pertinent, considering the recent PHP vulnerability findings

2: is there actually a better way of going about what I am trying to do?

3: any other advice regarding keeping my users safe in this way.

Thank you for reading

Best wishes

Jake

We are unable to actively say "Yes, we endorse x as being safe", but there are indeed a lot of people download from that resource. There is no other way in which to view a users messages without logging in as them.

34 minutes ago, Jake Middleton said:

I have read that there is a pluggin for the forum called "PM viewer" or something like that on https://www.sosinvision.com.br

No, you won’t find that app in my site. You’ll find it on https://invision-market.com/apps/admin/dp5-pm-viewer-r40/

Hi @Jake. I have a few suggestions.

We have very few issues with spam on our forums. Typically, we go a few months between each incident. Further, when there is spam, it effectively never makes as far as being viewable by members.

We have three post-count groups; I'll refer to them as Groups A, B & C.

Group A is for those members with zero posts.

Group B is for members with 1-9 posts.

Group C is for members with 10 or more posts.

Group A have their posts queued for moderator approval. Once they have had their first post approved, they are automatically moved to Group B and can post freely.

Group A cannot send private messages; Group B can.

But very few spam messages ever even make it to the approval queue because we use the app, AntiSpam, by CleanTalk:

https://cleantalk.org/anti-spam-plugins

It is cheap ($12/yr) and we have found it to be incredibly reliable. We typically go months between incidents of spam making it as far as the approval queue.

AntiSpam has proven so reliable, we are thinking about dropping approval of first posts. In which case, Group A might be for something like 0-9 posts, and apply restrictions something like:

Maximum 9 posts per day; can start 3 private messages per day, with a maximum of 1 recipient. You might also restrict the use of signature lines.

Then, rely upon members to report spam posts and private messages. But as I said, I would expect very problems.

I think logging into member accounts to view their messages is potentially very problematic. It should be reserved only for cases where the member has invited you in, or you have a very solid reason to suspect seriously problematic behaviour. I am unconvinced that potential spam would ever rise to this level.

In my experience, AntiSpam will make it very difficult for spammers to reach your PM system. And member-reporting (along with sensible restrictions on new accounts) will take care of most of the few who do make it through. I think your approach is making this harder for yourself than it need be. If you end using a similar system to us (approval of all post from accounts with zero posts), you likely will never have PM spam again.

On 10/23/2026 at 12:11 PM, Adriano Faria said:

No, you won’t find that app in my site. You’ll find it on https://invision-market.com/apps/admin/dp5-pm-viewer-r40/

Thank you for pointing that out. It was actually the google AI mode which told me it was on your site - but that AI frequently gets things wrong.

Its nice to actually talk to the owner of that site.

Jake

On 10/23/2026 at 4:21 PM, Como said:

Hi @Jake. I have a few suggestions.

We have very few issues with spam on our forums. Typically, we go a few months between each incident. Further, when there is spam, it effectively never makes as far as being viewable by members.

We have three post-count groups; I'll refer to them as Groups A, B & C.

Group A is for those members with zero posts.

Group B is for members with 1-9 posts.

Group C is for members with 10 or more posts.

Group A have their posts queued for moderator approval. Once they have had their first post approved, they are automatically moved to Group B and can post freely.

Group A cannot send private messages; Group B can.

But very few spam messages ever even make it to the approval queue because we use the app, AntiSpam, by CleanTalk:

https://cleantalk.org/anti-spam-plugins

It is cheap ($12/yr) and we have found it to be incredibly reliable. We typically go months between incidents of spam making it as far as the approval queue.

AntiSpam has proven so reliable, we are thinking about dropping approval of first posts. In which case, Group A might be for something like 0-9 posts, and apply restrictions something like:

Maximum 9 posts per day; can start 3 private messages per day, with a maximum of 1 recipient. You might also restrict the use of signature lines.

Then, rely upon members to report spam posts and private messages. But as I said, I would expect very problems.

I think logging into member accounts to view their messages is potentially very problematic. It should be reserved only for cases where the member has invited you in, or you have a very solid reason to suspect seriously problematic behaviour. I am unconvinced that potential spam would ever rise to this level.

In my experience, AntiSpam will make it very difficult for spammers to reach your PM system. And member-reporting (along with sensible restrictions on new accounts) will take care of most of the few who do make it through. I think your approach is making this harder for yourself than it need be. If you end using a similar system to us (approval of all post from accounts with zero posts), you likely will never have PM spam again.

That is quite a good way to do it, I have post count groups set up but the permissions are not as advanced as that. Thank you for the advice.

Jake