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Block someone from opening tickets in WHMCS?
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
in Help
There is an individual who is very keen to market their services on LowEndBox. Unfortunately, it's barely-adjacent content with low quality, and we're just not interested.
I've politely explained this to them, but every few days there's another ticket saying "here's some more great stuff to put on your site".
Rather than close each ticket manually, I ws thinking to block their ability to open tickets. I clicked "block sender" but that added them to the "blocked email senders list" and did not stop them from continuing to open tickets.
I'm thinking there is something else in WHMCS I should be looking at...?
Before people start guessing, the individual is not a LET member and to my knowledge has never participated in our community.
Comments
Are they changing their email? Is it opened via web form or via email sent? Also, do you have captcha enabled?
Is there a way to tell how the ticket is opened? I believe they're opening on https://services.lowendtalk.com/
There is an IP address logged by WHMCS in the bottom of the ticket which I think means web-opened. I'm sure worst case we could block that IP but this seems like something WHMCS could do...?
It's not spammy enough that a captcha would solve the problem. They open one ticket every day or two.
It's the same email address. If I click "Block Sender" on it, I get:
...because I've clicked block sender before.
Another option is to force visitors to register an account to make a ticket, but I am not sure if this is an option for you.
WHMCS always had too much bugs for me.
Is source code for WHMCS available? I'm asking because this might actually be the shortest way to what you want.
Alas, no. WHMCS makes the templates available so you can reskin things, but the actual code is IONcube-encoded.
Not really, but it's way too easy to find an uncoded version just by searching "WHMCS decoded" on GitHub
Yuck! But then that's what I expected.
Well then, IP blocking it is, it seems. But maybe contacting them and letting them know that almost urging LET staff to tell about them publicly incl. mentioning their name isn't exactly a smart thing to do could help them to at least go considerably slower?
Thanks a lot! *smirk
But can those be trusted and are they halfway up to date versions?
P.S. Actually I myself would choose the decompile the beast approach myself but I don't know about @raindog308's experience and expertise in that kind of tasks. Also, unlike me, he probably has (has to have) a more "get things done and efficiently" approach while I enjoy code analysis and making scripts do what I want/need (but then, I don't have to manage a business community like LEB...).
You don't say
As I saw, most are 7.x versions so a bit outdated, but still good if you just need to check how something works.
Anyway, as I can remember blocking the email only stops the imports of the tickets from the mailboxes attached to WHMCS, they can still open tickets from the webpage.
Will send you a hook in a sec to help with that.
Francisco
just remove/disable the account? if the user will make another account to circumvent, surely he/she will do that if you disable creations of tickets too?
Those are guest tickets.
Look at email headers and start blocking at asn level.
It's probably submitted via the contact/ticket form, which doesn't do email checks.
Edit: I'm incorrect apparently. Thought it didn't check it, at least a long time ago.
If anyone needs it, this hook extends the "Block sender" function even to the ticket-form https://pastebin.com/j9nQncQm
Thanks to @Francisco for the code review!
Still sounds weird that they won’t stop when asked but they also won’t use another email to circumvent
need to pay that 7$ bilohbuck tax
It's probably automated spamming.
I read it as their offer and message targetted LET specifically but maybe not
Just use this hooks. I tried to post it here, but CloudFlare/forum restrictions prevent posting code. So, I created a GitHub release instead. Simply download the hooks (PHP file), and you're good to go. Feel free to update it as needed.
https://github.com/BitcoinOffshoreHosting/WHMCS-Email-Ticket-Blocker-Hook/
Edit: I didn't notice someone else had posted a hook before. Both hooks accomplish the same things, mine is just a bit simpler since it was coded in 2 minutes.
At least we have hooks to fix issues.
https://whmcs.community/topic/342340-refunded-card-payment-and-look-at-the-date/
If you still haven't solved this with all the hooks, we created a module years ago to block names, emails, addresses from new signups/orders. Shoot me a pm and I'll send it to you tomorrow morning when I get into the office.
Found a bug and solved it on this new version:
https://pastebin.com/9XmjrBPM
Yeah, that should be much easier if the source code is available. Just block those particular user from submitting the form
[EDIT]
If it is submitted without login then we need to check the message body then