How to remove spam bots from a Telegram group that is already full of them

Where do I start when the group is already full of spam accounts?

Start at the door, not in the member list. If accounts are still joining, every ban is replaced by a new arrival, and you clean the same room twice.

The order that works:

1. Stop new arrivals.
2. Read Recent Actions to learn what happened.
3. Ban the spam accounts in batches.
4. Clear out deleted accounts.
5. Delete the spam messages.
6. Change the settings that let them in.

Do the first three today. Recent Actions only goes back 48 hours, and it is the best record you have.

A word on names. Most "bots" in an infested group are ordinary user accounts run by a script. Real Telegram bots, the kind an admin adds, are a separate and smaller problem. Step 3 covers both.

Step 1: How do I stop more spam accounts from joining?

Pick whichever of these fits your group. Both take a minute.

• Turn on approval. In a public group, enable Approve new members. New accounts then send a request and wait. How join requests work has the full setup.
• Revoke the link. Invite links are managed from the group's profile, under Edit > Invite Links. Telegram shows which members joined through each link, so you can see which one leaked. Revoke that link and create a new one with Request Admin Approval.

If spam is being posted right now, also open Permissions and switch off sending messages for members until you are done. Admins can still write. Pin a short note so real members know why the chat is quiet.

If the accounts are arriving by the hundred, you are in a raid, and the raid plan covers the first minutes in more detail.

Step 2: What does Recent Actions tell me?

Recent Actions is the group's admin log. Only admins can open it, and every admin can, whatever their other rights. It holds the service actions of the last 48 hours: who joined, who left, who was banned, and what each admin did. It also shows messages deleted in that time and the original text of messages that were edited.

The log can be narrowed by type of action and by admin, and it can be searched. Use it to answer four questions:

Question	What to look for in the log
When did it start?	The first run of joins that are seconds apart
Which accounts came together?	Joins in the same minutes, with similar names or no photo
What did they post?	Deleted messages, and edits where a clean message became a scam
Did an admin or a bot let them in?	Invites, approvals and permission changes by an admin you did not expect

Write down the time window of the wave. You will use it in the next step.

The fourth question matters more than it looks. If an admin account approved the wave or changed permissions, that account may be compromised. Check who holds which admin rights before you go on.

Step 3: How do I find and ban the spam accounts in bulk?

Telegram has no single button that removes every spam account. It has three tools that each clear a batch.

From the messages. This is the fastest. Select several spam messages in the chat. Telegram then offers one menu with a toggle for each sender and each action: delete, ban, report, or restrict. One pass removes the messages and bans every account that posted them.

From Recent Actions. Accounts that joined in the wave and never posted do not show up in the chat. Go through the joins in your time window and ban each one from there. These silent accounts are the ones that post next week, or that copy your member list to message your members privately.

From the member list. Members can be searched by name. Spam accounts are often created in series, so a search for the shared word or pattern in their names finds a batch. This is the only one of the three that reaches accounts older than 48 hours.

Signs that an account belongs to the wave:

• It joined in the same minute as many others.
• It has no photo, or the same photo as other accounts.
• Its name follows a pattern, such as a first name and a run of digits.
• Its bio advertises something, or links to another chat.

None of these is proof on its own. Real people also have no photo and odd names. Judge by the batch. An account that joined alone a year ago and talks like a person stays.

Check the Removed Users list. A banned account appears under Removed Users, which most apps show in the group's permission settings. While an account is on that list, it cannot return to a supergroup through an invite link. Taking it off the list lets it join again, so that is also where you fix a ban made by mistake.

Check the restricted accounts too. Members with individual limits, for example read-only, are listed separately. Clear out the ones that are spam, and lift limits placed on real members in the rush.

Then look at real bots. Open the group's administrators and its bots. Remove any bot that nobody on the team remembers adding, and any that is no longer used. A bot with admin rights that you cannot explain is a bigger risk than the spam accounts.

Step 4: Do I need to remove deleted accounts?

Usually not by hand. Telegram says accounts that no longer exist vanish from group member lists on their own, and that this can take up to a few days after the account was deleted.

A group that has been hit by spam often has some of them. An account that has been deleted can stay in your member list for a while, shown as a deleted account.

They cannot post and they cannot message anyone. They only inflate your member count. If some remain after a few days, an admin can remove them like any other member. Do it after the bans, not before. The live accounts are the urgent ones.

Step 5: How do I delete the spam messages?

Three ways, from widest to narrowest.

• Everything from one account. In a supergroup, an admin can delete all messages a specific member has sent, in one action. Use it for an account that posted many times.
• Several messages at once. Select them and delete them together. This is the same menu as in step 3, so if you banned from the messages, this part is already done.
• One by one. For the few that are left.

Look further back than the last screen. Search the chat for the link, the handle or the phrase the spam used. Old copies of a scam keep working for as long as they stay in the history, and anyone can read the full history of a public group without joining.

Check your pinned messages last. A spam account with the right to pin, or a compromised admin, leaves a scam where every member sees it first.

Step 6: Which settings keep the group clean afterwards?

A cleanup without new settings lasts until the next script finds your link.

Setting	What it changes
Approve new members, or invite links with Request Admin Approval	No account posts before someone or something has looked at it
Permissions	Members cannot send the kinds of content your group does not need
Slow mode	One account cannot flood the chat
Aggressive Anti-Spam, in groups with more than 200 members	Telegram's own filter acts on obvious spam. Mistakes can be reported from Recent Actions
Hidden member list, in groups with 100 or more members	Scrapers cannot collect your members to message them privately
Named invite links, one per place you share	The next leak tells you where it came from

How to stop spam bots walks through each of these settings and where they stop working.

They stop working at the same point every time. Settings judge an account once, when it joins. They do not see the account that waits a week, the message that is edited into a scam, or the scam inside a picture. That takes a bot that reads every message.

Targa is one. It is AI-powered and reads every message and every edit, reads text and QR codes inside images, and screens join requests as a Telegram Guardian bot. Every action carries a reason you can read with /why, and every action can be undone in one tap. If you want to watch it for a week first, shadow mode removes nothing and logs what it would have done. The free plan runs every detector, and the plans differ in volume, not in protection. Targa is in private beta, so access is by request.

When the group is clean, run the free group check to see what it still shows to someone looking from outside.

What should I not do during a cleanup?

• Do not start with the member list. Close the door first, or the list refills while you work.
• Do not wait. After 48 hours the log no longer shows who joined together.
• Do not ban on one sign. No photo is not proof. A wrong ban costs you a real member.
• Do not make the group private as the only fix. Links leak, and the accounts already inside stay inside.
• Do not reply to the spam. Delete it, ban the account, and tell members in one pinned note what happened.