Hello moderators. I have found this issue recently and have read all the threads I could find, with no success of solving it.
My PRIVATE group’s forum topics and replies show up in the activity stream.
I tested it thoroughly and what I found was it happens only to private group forums.
Not private forums that are unattached to groups.

bbpress 2.5.4
buddypress 2.1.1 and also after the update 2.2
wp 4.0.1

actions taken:
1.turned off all the plugins but buddypress and bbpress
tested with another theme
also used the Tools > Forums to recaculate and resync the forums
the problem remains.

Please help.

p.s the previous ticket was closed 15 months ago, but i found people
describingg this issue from 6 months ago. so clearly it remains unsolved.
see the last reply here

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/private-group-posts-appearing-in-activity-stream-to-non-members/

@petervandoorn, @apokh, @notpoppy, @melle328

thanx

[@henrywright Moderator 9 years, 10 months ago]

Hi @milenushka

tested with another theme

Which theme did you try with?

[@milenushka Participant 9 years, 10 months ago]

Hi @henrywright,

I am using buddyboss (child theme), tested it with default wp theme and buddyboss parent.

I also found this thread https://buddypress.org/support/topic/forum-in-private-groups/ started a few weeks ago, and I think @melle328 is right, this happens if the group is first set as public and later changed to private or as in my case- group forum is set to public first and then chosen as the private’s group forum.

So far it seems that if users create a group and a forum and later change their settings- the activity privacy is not updated. I keep testing different options as we speak, so I find something new, I will post it too.

[@milenushka Participant 9 years, 10 months ago]

@henrywright

Ok, I can confirm the issue now.

If a group is created as private and a forum is created with it- it will be a private forum and its activity will remain invisible to non group members.

If a private group is created and an existed forum is added to it- this forum need to be changed to private- otherwise the forum will remain public, even though the group attached to it is private- and the activity of the forum will be public.

Same goes for a public group+ forum , that is created together and later group setting are set to private. Forum remains public- forum’s activity -too.

Is there something to be done with the buddypress-bbpress integration to make this work?
Creating a function that will make a forum private too- if the group it was attached to becomes private? @johnjamesjacoby
https://buddypress.org/support/topic/bugs-between-bbpress-and-buddypress/

[@henrywright Moderator 9 years, 10 months ago]

Hi again @milenushka

So you’re saying if a public forum is added to a private group then you’d like that forum to automatically be made private?

[@milenushka Participant 9 years, 10 months ago]

Yes.

If the admin is creating the groups and forums there is no problem (well if he knows this is an issue),
but if the members are creating groups and later want to change groups settings to “private”, they have no control over the forums’ privacy. And that leaves them confused or if sensitive info was shared in the forums, upset too.

So, yeah, something needs to be done.

thank you for looking into this @henrywright.

[@henrywright Moderator 9 years, 10 months ago]

I see what you mean about this possibly being confusing to the member. I think you should create a Trac ticket for this to see what the core developers think.

https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/

You can use the exact same username and password you use here in the forums.

[@milenushka Participant 9 years, 10 months ago]

Thanks @henrywright , I did that.

[@milenushka Participant 9 years, 10 months ago]

P.s thats what bbpress said
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2599