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How to Remove Spam Bugs and Comments From Bugzilla

Our Bugzilla instance does not enable a feature to allow one to delete a bug that has been submitted. However there is an indirect way for someone with Administrator access to delete bugs, by 1) creating a new Component for the Spamassassin project; 2) changing the component of the bugs to be deleted; 3) deleting the component, which will also delete all bugs that are set to be in that component.

Bugzilla provides a method to hide spam comments, but not to edit or delete them.

Before going through the procedure to delete the spam bug reports and hide spam comments, first disable the user from logging in and from receiving mail that will result from the changes you make when deleting the bug reports:

  • In the Administration page, click on Users
  • Search using "login name" matching the login email address of the user.
  • Click on the found user to edit their account.
  • There, type some brief explanation such as "spammer" in the Disabled Text box. Any text in the box will disable their login. Also make sure the checkbox to disable Bugzilla mail is selected.
  • Save the changes, then proceed with deleting the bugs and comments they have entered.
  • Deleting a bug that is spam can only be done by someone who has Administrator access to our Bugzilla.

Steps to delete spam bug reports:

  • Click on the Administration menu item, then the components link under Products, then select the spamassassin product.
  • On the resulting components page add a new component with a name such as Trash, anything in the Description field, and your email address as the default assignee.
  • Find all bugs reported by the spammer:
    • Alternate procedure 1: Search for the user in the Administration | Users page as described in the previous section, and try to delete the user. That will refuse to delete it because of existing bugs and comments. The message about existing bugs has a link to search results for all bug reports submitted by that user. The message about existing comments has a link to search results for all bugs with comments by that user.
    • Alternate procedure 2: Do a search for the email address that submitted the spam bug. Click on Search, then Advanced Search. Deselect everything under Status. In Search By People set the Reporter is the email address.
  • If there is only one such bug you can click on it to edit it, otherwise near the bottom search results page click on the Change Several Bugs at Once button.
  • If changing several bugs at once, select all of the spam bugs, and make the following changes near the bottom of the page. If editing a single bug, the fields are near the top.
    • Change the Component to the new one you created, e.g., Trash
    • Change the assignee to your email address.
    • If editing a single bug, In the CC list to the right, click on "edit", select all the existing addresses and select the checkbox "Remove selected CCs".
    • If it was a security bug be sure  to unselect the Security Team checkbox near the bottom of the page (editing a single bug), or if changing several bugs at once select the checkbox "Remove bugs from this group" for Security Team.
    • Submit (Save) the changes.
  • Then back at the Components administration page, delete the Trash component you just made, which after confirmation will also delete the bugs you just moved to it.

Steps to hide spam comments from that spammer in non-spam bug reports:

  • Find all bugs with comments posted by the spammer:
    • Alternate procedure 1: Search for the user in the Administration | Users page as described in the previous section, and try to delete the user. That will refuse to delete it because of existing bugs and comments. The message about existing bugs has a link to search results for all bug reports submitted by that user. The message about existing comments has a link to search results for all bugs with comments by that user.
    • Alternate procedure 2: Do a search for the email address that submitted the spam bug. Click on Search, then Advanced Search. Deselect everything under Status. In Search By People set a Commenter is the email address.
  • Go to each such bug report and select the checkbox "private" on each spam comment, then Save. This will hide the comment from non-Administrators.

Leave the user disabled instead of deleting, so they can't use the same email to register again.

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