@lairbear spam is an issue that is almost impossible to control, even the big proprietary social networks have a huge issue with spam – and they have alot of money to spend on controlling it. (I’m very popular with all of the really, really hot ladies on Facebook… lol)
In BuddyPress 1.6 their will be some anti-spam tools for the activity feed built-in that will hook into Akismet (http://akismet.com) to help control it, and while it has cut it down by alot on my test sites using it, nothing can beat manual HUMAN moderation. (Related ticket: https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3660)
Theirs also afew plugins that add captchas to the registration page, to kick them out before their even in… oh, and this article is pretty comprehensive – http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/security/best-practices-for-preventing-buddypress-spam-user-registrations/
Thats great Chris!
I also experienced my first registered spammer today, while I already took some precautions.
I’ve installed https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stop-spammer-registrations-plugin/ to stop spammers from getting in. The most important plugin (imho) which is not available is new user moderation…
A lot of small communities also use buddypress, and for those communities I think it would be fantastic to have an option to hold new users for moderation.
This plugin: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-registration-options/ was able to do that but hasn’t been updated in ages…
And that option will probably stop bad users from getting in, forever 
“The most important plugin (imho) which is not available is new user moderation…”
In 1.6 the core devs have been doing some work on user capability stuff to make user moderation easier and mentioned that some of the changes will “give us more control over a users status and capabilities for later.” So, something like that ‘could’ end up in core *later*
See: https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4038
But, their are wordpress’ plugins that might help keep non-authorised users out – eg. https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-secure-invites/ & https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-invites/
This is exactly what I have been trying to find an answer to. No one has seemed to provide a straight answer but this goes a long way. Thanks guys. I think I will reference this and work on this problem myself, too, and provide some feedback.
I think (not sure!) that one of the ways you can stop spam is to put required fields on the profile that utilize human input. Requiring fields like favorite color, or something where people have to actually input something may be helpful to slow down spam. At least, that’s a theory. Anyone have anything like that or provide some feedback on this theory?
I would urge that you consider adding additional options for any member to take their activity page as well as their profile page private so that this doesn’t happen!
Another way for lairbear to reduce spam on the activity page not to mention elsewhere is to go into his wp discussion settings and make it a requirement that anybody posting a comment be registered.
What I can’t understand is how all the big time Buddypress sites don’t have the same heavy spam that little, unkown sites are experiencing. This site for example. Where’s the spam? Or testbp.org, where oh where is the spammmmm?! They are obviously doing something to block it. But what’s the secret, and why is it a secret??
I’m actually about ready to pitch Buddypress completely at this point because of spam. I’ve tried all the options I see mentioned all over the web about how to combat spammers…and my Buddypress site is the only one that its consistently not working on. Even with more than one captcha hoop to jump through on registration, they are still getting in and filling up my activity stream! I’ve about had it.
Tina – see response in your post
@neononcon no secret, it takes a village to watch out for spammers in BPorg, WPorg bbPorg etc which share the same userbase. Volunteers report spam, Moderators delete spam posts, Admins delete so from the backend and so forth.
@tina have you ever wondered why they can’t get Akismet to block the spammers like it does on WordPress? And even more thought provoking is how does this site block spammers so well but none of us regular users can manage a normal BP install without being overtaken by spam? After all the hard work to get BP looking nice, it’s a waste due to issues like this. 
@neononcon it does make me wonder, now that you mention it….although i suppose its because they have more people keeping an eye open for spammers? i simply don’t have the time to keep up with all the spammers. sigh. i don’t have anywhere near this size of a problem with this on my other sites, all wordpress…but then, they are not set up to be a community like this one buddypress site is. its never really taken off anyway so i’m seriously thinking its time to ditch buddypress…but then, i’ve put a lot of work into the theme and setting it all up so its very frustrating!!
@Tina but isn’t it interesting that they supposedly have so many people keeping an eye open for spammers but so many important posts go unanswered. LOL I’m calling BS on that one. A completely unused Buddypress site is having new registrations and posts on average of every 5 minutes and sometimes less. But yet this site is virtually spam free. What’s the secret? Why can’t Akismet block the Buddypress spam?
Blimey. I’d like to reassure that there’s no conspiracy theory (but I would say that, right?), nor is the BuddyPress.org team ignoring posts on these forums. We are all volunteers, and we only have so much time that we can contribute. This thread is not heading in a constructive direction so I am going to close it.
Mercime’s answer above was good as any. It takes a lot of effort from lots of people to try to prevent spam. This thread talks about user registration spam and activity spam. In our next version of BuddyPress, 1.6, Akismet is integrated into Activity Stream. We have this running on testbp.org and it seems to be doing a decent job at helping.
And a parting final comment or two on what does tend to become a wearisome topic:
Spam is pandemic across internet sites, all internet sites that have a member/registration system suffer from spammers – it is not! a problem that BP has more than any other app.
It’s annoying to have to go in every day and delete these users
And here is the rub so to speak; you DO! have to go in everyday and manage your site, how could you not think that wasn’t important or even vital? Any site of the type ‘Forum’ or ‘blog’ has to be managed and that really has to be realised why run a site if your not prepared to… run it – it’s why there are ‘admin’ roles!
I perform admin / moderator duties on a fairly large tech forum running Drupal we number six mods and each and every day we each deal with two or three spammers each this is over and above the measures put in place to deal with spam bots.
There are primarily two types of spam bots(automated) and humans(real people) There are a number of tricks and tips to dealing with bots and by and large there are actually pretty effective, these approaches and been linked to quite often so search those out and implement. As for humans this is the real issue, there isn’t a lot you can do about people registering on your site then posting garbage – not unless you close of membership or restrict membership – you have decided to run a open registration member site so really you need to get with the plot and understand that you WILL be spammed, if you find it too much trouble to visit your site once a day or to appoint further admins in your community that can deal with it then expect, when you do finally visit to have a lot more spam to deal with and for those spammers to have had the luxury of unfettered access to promote their links or harass your members – It really is your choice how you run your site but please please stop hunting round for this magic ‘thing’ that stops all spam dead it does not! exist.
I am daily getting very much spams on http://placementmantra.net/
no idea how.even tried plugin no use
