How to set up a honeypot channel in Discord

What a honeypot is

Spam scripts and hacked-account tools post to every channel the account can see. They do not read channel names. So you create a channel that no real member has a reason to post in, tell real members not to, and treat anything posted there as proof of compromise.

It catches the cases filters cannot: a brand-new scam with no known image or phrase, a link on a domain registered this morning, a message in a language your word list does not cover. The content does not matter. Posting there at all is the signal.

Set up the channel

1. Create a text channel. Name it something a script will not skip and a human will not touch. #do-not-post-here or #bot-trap both work. Avoid names like #general-2 that a confused member might use.
2. Put it low in the channel list, ideally inside a category near the bottom. Scripts iterate in order, so this is usually where a wave ends up before staff notice.
3. Permissions. Everyone can view and send. If real members cannot see it, hacked members cannot post in it either, and the trap does nothing. Staff roles should be exempt so a moderator clicking the wrong channel is not punished.
4. Post a warning inside it. One pinned message: this channel is a trap, do not post here, anything posted is removed and the account is actioned. Frostbite posts a localized version of this for you when you register the channel.

Register it with Frostbite

/filter sethoneypotchannel channel:#do-not-post-here
/filter punish honeypot action:Timeout timeout_minutes:60

The first command arms the trap and posts the warning. The second picks what happens beyond deleting the message. The options are:

• None. Delete and alert only. Start here for the first week.
• Timeout. Stops the wave immediately and is reversible. The right default for most servers.
• Kick, optionally with reinvite:True, which DMs the member a one-time invite before the kick so a hacked member can come straight back once their account is secure.
• Ban. Only worth it if you never see hacked accounts, only spam bots.

Whatever you pick, the member receives a DM first explaining what happened, with your appeal link if you set one with /filter setappeallink.

Why timeout beats ban here

Most honeypot trips on an established server are hacked members, not bots. A ban punishes the victim and, unless someone remembers to lift it, loses you a real member. A one-hour timeout stops the posting for as long as the recovery takes, and the DM tells them how to do it. There is a full guide to the hacked-account case.

Check it works

Run /filter status. It shows the honeypot as armed, the action you chose, and flags if Frostbite is missing a permission it needs in that channel, which is the usual reason a trap silently does nothing.