The short answer
A raid is a wave of accounts that joins a Telegram group within minutes, to flood the chat or to sit quietly and spam later. Close the door first: turn on member approval and revoke the invite link. Then silence the chat, ban the batch, and tell your members what happened.
Key facts
- A raid is judged by the wave, not by the account. Each account on its own can look ordinary.
- With member approval on, new accounts wait in a request list that only admins see.
- Slow mode limits each member to one message per interval. It does not stop a hundred accounts posting one message each.
- A banned account is listed under Removed Users and cannot rejoin through an invite link while it stays there.
- The Recent Actions log covers the last 48 hours, so clean up within two days.
- A real launch also brings a wave of joiners. The decision to treat a wave as a raid should stay with a person.
What is a raid on a Telegram group?
A raid is many accounts joining one group in a short time. It is also called a join flood. The accounts are bought or scripted, and each one looks ordinary: a name, sometimes a photo, nothing posted yet.
Raids come in three kinds:
- The flood. The accounts post at once: links, a "giveaway", insults, or junk that pushes real conversation off the screen.
- The sleeper wave. The accounts join and stay silent. They post next week, when they no longer look new.
- The harvest. The accounts never post. They are there to read the member list and message your members privately. See the fake admin scam.
The second and third kinds are quiet. Many admins only notice the first.
A raid can also land in a channel's discussion group, under every post. See spam in channel comments.
What do Telegram's own settings do in a raid?
| Setting | What it does | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Approve new members in a public group | New accounts wait in a request list that only admins see | Someone has to work through the list |
| Invite links with Request Admin Approval | The same, for links you create | A link without approval stays open until you revoke it |
| Slow mode | Each member sends one message per interval | A hundred accounts still send a hundred messages |
| Permissions | Stops all members sending certain kinds of content, or any messages | It silences your real members too |
| Aggressive Anti-Spam, in groups with more than 200 members | Telegram's own filter removes spam it recognises | It judges messages, not the wave of joins |
Each of these helps. None of them notices that two hundred accounts arrived in the same minute. A person has to see that and act. Telegram's built-in anti-spam tools covers what each setting does and does not stop.
What should admins do, minute by minute?
Agree on this plan before you need it, and decide who does each part.
First minute: close the door.
- Turn on Approve new members. In a public group it sits under Group Type, after you set Who Can Send Messages to Only Members.
- Revoke the invite link the wave is coming through.
Minutes two to five: silence the chat.
- Open Permissions and stop members from sending messages, or at least media. This is blunt, and it is temporary.
- If you keep the chat open, turn on slow mode.
- Post and pin one notice from an admin account: "We are under a spam wave. Do not open links. Admins will never message you first."
Minutes five to thirty: remove the batch.
- Open Recent Actions and look at who joined. The batch shows itself: the same minutes, no photos or similar names.
- Ban them, and check that they appear under Removed Users. An account on that list cannot come back through an invite link.
- Delete what they posted.
The first hour: reopen.
- Create a new invite link with Request Admin Approval, and give it a name so you know where joiners come from.
- Restore permissions and unpin the notice.
What should a bot do in a raid?
Three things a tired admin cannot.
- See the wave. Count joins over time and react to the burst itself, not to each account.
- Hold, then ask. Keep the newcomers from the burst silent and ask the admins whether the wave is expected. A real launch also brings a wave of joiners. A bot that bans every burst will ban your best day.
- Stop it at the door. If the group uses join requests, the bot should screen them, so the raid never gets in.
This is how Targa treats raids. It watches join velocity, and when many accounts pour in within a short window the raid response triggers on the wave itself. As a Telegram Guardian bot it screens every join request, and raid waves are declined at the door. Every decline is logged with a reason, and every action can be undone in one tap. In shadow mode it removes nothing and logs what it would have done.
Two limits, stated plainly. On the free plan, protection pauses when the monthly message limit is reached, and a raid uses messages fast. Paid plans can add extra messages up to a ceiling you set. The plans explain both. And no bot can see the private messages a harvest wave sends to your members afterwards.
How do I clean up after a raid?
- Go back through Recent Actions within two days. It covers the last 48 hours. Look for accounts from the wave that never posted, and ban those too.
- Check your invite links. Revoke any you do not use.
- Hide the member list if your group has 100 or more members. A raid that came to copy the list has less to take next time.
- Tell members what happened. One short message. Remind them that admins never message first.
- Write down what worked and who did it. The next raid comes at a worse hour.
If the wave got in before the door closed, how to remove spam bots from a group gives the full cleanup order.
For the settings that make the next raid smaller, see how to stop spam bots. To see what your group shows to someone looking from outside, run the free group check.
Common questions
What is a raid on Telegram?
A raid, or join flood, is a large number of accounts joining one group in a short time. Some raids flood the chat with links at once. Others join quietly and post days later, or copy the member list to message members privately.
Does Telegram have built-in raid protection?
Not a single switch. Member approval, invite links with admin approval, slow mode, permissions and the aggressive anti-spam filter each slow a raid down. None of them looks at the wave as a whole, and all of them need an admin who is awake.
Should I make my group private during a raid?
Turning on member approval does the useful part without the cost. Nobody new can post until an admin or a bot lets them in, and your link keeps working for real people. Revoke the link the wave came through either way.
How do I remove hundreds of raid accounts?
Open Recent Actions, look for accounts that joined in the same minutes, and ban them. Each one should then appear under Removed Users, which keeps it from rejoining through a link. The log covers 48 hours, so do it soon.
How do I tell a raid from real growth?
Look at what brought the wave. A launch, a listing or a post by a large account brings real people, and they arrive through the link you shared. A raid arrives with no cause you can name. A bot can hold the wave, but a person should make the call.
See what a scammer sees in your group
The free group check reads a group's public signals and shows where it is exposed. No account needed.