Telegram's built-in anti-spam tools: what each setting does and does not stop

What anti-spam tools does Telegram build in?

Four, and each one works on a different thing.

• Aggressive Anti-Spam looks at messages and deletes the ones Telegram's filters judge to be spam.
• Slow mode limits how often each member can post.
• Default permissions decide which kinds of content members can send at all.
• Approval of new members decides which accounts get in.

They cost nothing and need no bot. Turn on the ones that fit your group before you add anything else. Then read the last column of the table below, because every one of them has a known blind spot.

This guide covers the settings for ordinary members. The switches you give to admins and bots are a different subject, explained in Telegram admin permissions.

What is Aggressive Anti-Spam?

Telegram runs automated spam filters across the whole platform. Since December 2022, admins of groups with more than 200 members can turn on an aggressive mode of those filters for their own group. Telegram's FAQ puts it this way: in large groups, the mode lets you use Telegram's full set of anti-spam tools in your chat.

What Telegram's pages confirm about it:

• The size requirement. The announcement says groups with over 200 members. Telegram's developer documentation lists a minimum group size of 200 for the feature. A smaller group does not get the switch.
• Who acts. Once the mode is on, Telegram's own anti-spam bot deletes the messages. You do not add that bot as a member or as an admin.
• Where it shows. Turning the mode on or off is recorded in the group's admin log, and so is each message it deletes.
• How mistakes are corrected. Admins can report a false positive from the Recent Actions log.

What Telegram does not publish is how the filter decides. There is no list of rules, no sensitivity setting and no allow list. You cannot tell it that links to your own site are fine. You switch it on or off.

You find the switch in the group's settings, in the part where you manage administrators.

How do admins correct a wrong removal?

1. Open Recent Actions in the group's settings. Only admins can see it.
2. Find the message the filter deleted. The log shows deleted messages for the last 48 hours.
3. Report it as a false positive.

Telegram says these reports help train its filters. Its pages do not say that the report puts the message back in the chat. Plan on telling the member what happened and asking them to post again.

The 48 hours matter. A group that nobody checks over a long weekend loses the chance to correct anything removed on the first day. If you turn the mode on, make reading Recent Actions someone's job.

What does slow mode do?

Slow mode lets each member send one message per interval. You choose the interval. Telegram offers steps from a few seconds up to one hour. A timer shows the member how long they have to wait.

Three details from Telegram's documentation:

• It is a setting for supergroups. Most large groups already are supergroups.
• Changing it takes an admin with the right to restrict members.
• Admins can let members who boost the group bypass slow mode. Check that setting if your group uses boosts.

Slow mode counts messages. It does not read them. That makes it good against one account flooding the chat, and of no use against one well-placed scam message.

What can default permissions switch off?

Default permissions apply to every member who is not an admin. Telegram lets you take away specific kinds of content, or stop members from sending messages altogether.

According to Telegram's documentation, the kinds you can switch off include:

• text messages
• photos, videos, video messages, music, voice messages and files
• stickers and GIFs
• polls
• embedding links
• use of inline bots
• adding members, pinning messages and changing the group's info

Two points decide how useful this is.

Permissions work by type, not by content. Switching off photos removes every photo, including the ones your members want to share. Nothing in the list reads what a message says.

There is no permission that blocks a link typed into text. The Embed links permission is about links embedded in a message and their previews. A group that wants "no links from members" needs a bot for that. How to stop spam bots covers this in more detail.

As with slow mode, admins can let members who boost the group bypass these restrictions.

How do I restrict new members?

Telegram's documentation describes two levels of rights: the default for all members, and the rights of one member. It does not describe a level for members who joined recently. So "new members cannot post links for a week" is not a built-in switch.

What you can do with Telegram alone:

• Approve accounts before they get in. Public groups can enable Approve New Members. Any group can create invite links that require admin approval. The join requests guide explains both.
• Restrict one member by hand. An admin can put a member in read-only mode, or stop them from sending media or stickers, for a set period or permanently.
• Hide the member list. Groups with 100 or more members can do this. It does not restrict anyone, but it keeps joiners from collecting your members' names.

Telegram also lets bots apply temporary or permanent restrictions automatically. That is how "new members wait before posting" is done in practice: a bot applies a restriction to each newcomer and lifts it later.

Which setting stops what?

The last column is reasoning from how each setting works. It is not a test result.

Setting	What it does	Who can use it	What gets past it
Aggressive Anti-Spam	Telegram's filters delete messages they judge to be spam	Admins of groups with more than 200 members	Anything the filter does not recognise as spam. You cannot add your own rules, so spam specific to your community is judged like any other message.
Slow mode	One message per member per interval	Admins with the right to restrict members, in supergroups	The first message. Many accounts posting once each. Boosters, if you let them bypass it.
Default permissions	Remove kinds of content for all members	Admins	Any spam in a kind you left on. A link typed as plain text.
Restriction on one member	Limits a single account, for a period or permanently	Admins with the right to restrict members	Every account you have not noticed yet. It is applied by hand, after the fact.
Approval of new members	Holds each account until an admin approves it	Public groups, or any group through an approval link	An account that looks normal when it asks and posts later.

Read down the last column and one pattern shows. Each setting makes one decision, once: this message, this rate, this type, this account at the door. Spam that changes after that decision is not looked at again.

Is Aggressive Anti-Spam enough on its own?

For some groups, yes. A group of people who know each other, with approval on and a few content types switched off, may never need more.

It stops being enough when the spam is aimed at your group in particular. Think of an account that joins, behaves for a week and then posts an offer. Think of a message that is edited after it was posted, or a scam placed inside a picture. The built-in settings were not designed around those cases, and Telegram does not publish whether its filter covers them. For sudden waves of accounts, see raid protection.

A sensible order for an admin:

1. Turn on approval of new members if the group is public or its link is shared widely.
2. Switch off the content types your members do not need.
3. Set slow mode to a short interval if the chat is busy.
4. Past 200 members, turn on Aggressive Anti-Spam and check Recent Actions daily for the first weeks.
5. Then decide whether you need a bot for what is left.

Where does a bot fit alongside these settings?

A bot does not replace the settings above. It covers what they cannot express: rules about content, rules about newcomers, and a second look when a message changes.

When you choose one, ask whether it reads every message and every edit, whether it reads pictures and QR codes, whether it explains each action, and whether it can run without acting first.

Targa is AI-powered and reads every message and every edit. It normalizes lookalike characters before judging, 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. If you want to watch it 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.

Whatever you add, keep the built-in settings on. They work even when a bot is offline. To see what your group shows from outside, run the free group check.