Free Email Ban Extension: Delete Spam Accounts

[Matthew]

I am required by our company's business process to allow email tickets without pre-registration. The issue, of course, is that we leave ourselves open to spammers. My solution thus far has been to use POP3 accounts and have SpamAssassin on our mail server flag messages which can then be shuffled into a spam 'folder' (a department created to collect spam tickets). The sender addresses can then easily be added to the parser ban list, though we must take care not to ban valid, but spoofed, addresses.

Nevertheless, the user accounts remain in Kayako--because as we know, the Ban & Delete option does not delete any user accounts. A number of people on other threads have asked how to automatically delete these accounts, which often contain zero tickets.

If you auto-delete zero ticket accounts, however, you run the risk of deleting valid accounts of user who, for example, only log in to use the Knowledgebase, Troubleshooters, or Downloads.

I see two ways to approach this problem of spurious user accounts.

1. Extend the functionality of Ban & Delete to also delete any user account which exists for the sender. Since access to this facility can be controlled in the staff group permissions, this could work well and with relative safety. However, it will mean that most staff must go through a two-step process to delete a spam ticket:
   1. Ban the address.
   2. Delete the spam ticket.
2. Another option is to extend the functionality of the Email Bans list to allow mass-deletion of spam user accounts. My logic says that if I've banned the email address, I should in nearly every case delete any associated user account--but I'd like to be able to check the account first before doing anything so drastic.

I may yet try option 1 (easy, I think), but for now I've concentrated on option 2. Here's what my mod does:

• Creates a version of the Email Bans list on the staff side.
• Creates a new column in the list which indicates the "User Status" of a particular email address, i.e., whether a corresponding account exists for that particular address.
• If the account exists, you can click a link to open it, and view any associated tickets.
• You can select any number of email addresses, and mass-delete any user accounts associated with them.

The screenshot shows how this looks:



Because of the time involved, I'm going to hold off for the moment on notating the mod until there are several people out there (especially other community developers) who actually express an interest.

[Jamie Edwards]

I think this would be a brilliant addon