OK in that same section of ubbthreads.inc.php, just a few lines below, it gets to the mailing part and ends with:
$mailer->ubbt_mail($result['USER_REAL_EMAIL']);
I am commenting out that line so it doesn't mail.
My forums used to be incredibly busy between 20 years ago and 10 years ago. Really really busy. There are threads in there with thousands of posts. Those users then over time moved on to use Facebook and Twitter instead, but those posts are still there.
Now let's say in 2018 a spammer comes along. They create a pristine new account and make a good post. They seem to be a good user. Then they go back to that thread from the year 2010 and they make a spam post there. That spam post gets alerted out to 100 different people who haven't used our forum in 10 years. They don't even remember our forum - but they see an income spam post from it. They all mark that email as coming from a spammer. That then blocks our entire system from mailing to Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. It has created an enormous problem for us which absolutely must be ended.
The few people who now actively post in the forums don't care about email. The majority of our forum traffic now is from passive readers of the historical content. I have zero concerns about the forum ever using email. I desperately need email to work properly for our newsletters and other functions.
Hopefully this change will now block watch email from going out to anybody anywhere, period. That's what I need.
