Email confirmation & anti-spam / malware filters accessing the link before the email is delivered
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Hello,
I've set up a new nodebb forum which requires email confirmation. However I have encountered an issue (which also affects this forum hosted here).
Due to company policies I have to use our Outlook365 system to send out the activation email. This is protected by a Barracuda Sentinel (EE) system which scans emails and does a HEAD request on any links it finds. I can see this HEAD request to forum.our-domain.com/activate/token in the NGINX logs and the response is 200.
There is another system afterwards which does a GET request of the same link which is answered with 404.
Once I receive the email, I also get a 404 error from nodebb with the animal icon and the "You seem to have stumbled upon a page that does not exist." text.
When I signed up on this forum, I had the same issue getting the same message and my account was already activated.
My question is: Is it possible to keep the activation token active and show the same activation success message for the duration of "Hours to keep email confirmation link valid" in the email settings, or at least show a nice page saying "Your account has already been activated" instead of the 404 not found page?
I'm working with our administrators to get this removed when we send emails, but it's also possible some of our customers have similar systems and will struggle with this.
Thanks a lot for the support.