Quote from Purusothaman Ramanujam
PS: Disabling any plugins helped it out?

I let them spam one of my sites and it has been picking up traffic ever since. so if your purpose of your site is to make money from adds then they do more good then they do bad. 

Quote from TattooBoy Just make it so you have to approve members before they can post blogs. If they cant spam the blog it serves them no marketing purpose.

I let them spam one of my sites and it has been picking up traffic ever since. so if your purpose of your site is to make money from adds then they do more good then they do bad. 

It's very important to understand the ways spammers usually operate: 

- human activity (expensive => rare usage, more intelligent, more target );

- automatic bots (cheap, an ability to automate the process and perform thousands less targeted submissions, less effective, but obtain the most problems for small communities )

If you google it, you'll find a dozen of information how to prevent different spam activity for websites. There are thousands antispam solutions for different softwares.
But, in general, preventing spam activity could be related to the following activities/tools:

- using a crafty join: when the system tries to cheat spam bots by adding the fake profile questions which the usual user don't see on join page. If the fake questions has been filled, then a spammer is detected. The method prevents from several simple automatic bots. And could be avoided by creating more intelligent script. But the method is more effective on small communies and allows to prevent spammers' profiles registration. ( in secret, Oxwall will get that tool with the next update)

- IP/email/content checking: the method allows to catch both automatic/human spam activity. Usually, the system uses some popular antispam services with the latest database of spammers' IPs/emails/content. For small communities, the system could be less effective then the crafty join. Because:

   - the effectiveness depends from how often a spam database is updated;  

   - as a spam database bigger as more false positive results could be received;   

   - due to rare database updates, spammers' profiles are usually allowed to join site (but detected in a short time after the database was updated)
Different sites require different parameters for that both options. That's why Watch Dog uses a small spam database and updates it twice a day (less false positives, more effective for small communites), but AntiSpammer uses more antispam databases and has an option to perform online checks (more false positives, more effective for large communities). 

The best option to prevent spam activity is to combine the both. As this is the only way to catch automatic and human spam activity at the same time. That is what we are going to implement with the next update to make it allow catch the spam effectively.
Thanks. 

Could always ask the development team to request the IP address and seller information of the people selling the spam links. They sell links on our blogs from fiverr. Also seems blocking  Pakistan might help as that's where the sellers of this service reside. If I was the oxwall team I would first request the information and then send cease an desist letters. If the spam is still occurring then they could bring them to court. Seems logical to me but hey I am just someone who is not allowed to be a team member because I have more posts them all the team members and none of them were just moving your questions so what do I know. 

Quote from Abbey Jayne
I changed my captcha to http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/583 , since I have had few spammers and have had no need for custom fields. The ones using the software built to automaticly join oxwall sites n post content can no longer access my site.

The ones that do get through i diligently delete their accounts. All but a couple have got the message.



Personally I wouldn't restrict new accounts when they initially join, if I joined a site n couldn't participate I'd probably never come back

Thats what ive done you still get spam accounts and angry people that don't want to wait and end up leaving before they even bother to contact you for an account upgrade but it's the best way to save yourself the time of deleting hundreds of spam posts about rubbish on a niche site. and frankly if i loose impatient members cause they can't do one simple thing like contact admin for an account upgrade im happy as punch cause id only abuse them later, on another issue when id be faced with dealing with their crap. the customer is not allows right lol.

long short pete is right gotta use your user roles it sucks but for niche sites it's a must or you will have a site about bushcrafting like in my case with people people about racing cars, wow gold and viagra non stop.

( UPDATE i think pete ment doing it slightly different to me though after re reading but we both are sorta talking about same thing)

I posted a Annoucment on index of site

Please learn about user roles and how you can unlock more site features for free, Read this forum post!

with a link to a forum post running through user roles and why we have them letting people know it's to stop spam and any good member with half a brain will get that and will appreciate it cause it's allowing them a better user experience in the long run.

( how ever i think pete ment every 24hours upgrading the members even if they dont send admin message not sure what this achieves though you might as well just let them go and ban em later. if you make them contact you and they can hold a conversation for 2 mins then you know there not a bot best spam protection is yourself.)