BuddyPress.org

Thanks Andrea I didnt even realise that other users could add new users, because I was also wondering how they were spamming me even after I disabled registrations.

I feel kind of sorry for the spammers, because if we all put our heads together they won’t have anymore sites left to spam. I still wonder why they are attacking buddypress, is it to drive users to other platforms? Enemys of Buddypress?

So far I have built a list of domains, most of them are .info or .co.cc in otherwords free domains and of course some .com domains. They get clever and get a user to sign up with gmail every now and then to trick me. So i just ban the Gmail users and send them an email from my personal account asking them who they are if they look legitamate. Luckily for me I am in South Africa and its easy to spot non South African “culture” in terms of the types of names and usernames of members.

I have also checked where the IP addresses come from and most are coming from the United States ( do they use proxy servers and could the be from elsewhere in the world) Some IP addresses are also from Sweden.

Btw, I was also angry and blamed the devs for this problem but the more I devote time to looking at the more I am starting to realise that no matter what BP devs do the spammers always try new things and if the devs had to devote lots of time to fighting spam all the time they would never have a chance to improve buddypress and sort out bugs that come along. And if they didnt sort out the issues we would be even more upset.

So I think the fight against spam is in our hands the users, it will also help us learn more about being better webmasters. Its also the least we could do to help give back something in exchange for a product that we are getting for free and that could quite easily be charged for. We need to stop expecting things for free and in our laps and learn to be greatful for what the developers of open source software are putting in and giving away for free.