According to anti-fraud systems, between 15% and 35% of subscribers in popular Telegram channels may be bots. In highly competitive niches (crypto, finance, business), this figure can sometimes reach 50%.

Advertisers lose up to 40% of their budgets due to manipulations, and channel owners risk not only their reputation but also potentially facing blocking from Telegram. In this guide, we’ll review the methods used by attackers, how to distinguish regular bots from neural bots, and what tools can help secure your channel before an attack even begins.

What Risks Do Manipulations Pose for Channel Owners

Many administrators mistakenly believe that manipulated subscribers are just "dead weight" that doesn't interfere. In reality, the damage from bots is much more serious.

First of all, trust from advertisers decreases. Today, even a small channel is checked through exchanges or manually analyzes statistics before purchasing ads. If post views don’t match the number of subscribers, if chat activity is nonexistent, and audience growth looks unnatural—this is a signal that the channel has been manipulated. The advertiser will either refuse to place ads or pay significantly less.

Moreover, bots can provoke a blockage. Telegram periodically cleans accounts suspected of dishonest activity. If a channel is followed by several thousand obvious bots, the algorithms might consider the channel itself a spam tool.

In this case, a blockage is just a matter of time.

Another problem is the distortion of real statistics. You stop understanding what content is truly interesting to real people. Growth in subscribers says nothing about quality, and analytics turn into useless numbers. This interferes with both promotion and monetization.

Finally, there are reputational risks. Lists of "junk" channels spread quickly in professional communities. If your channel ends up on such a list, regaining trust will be extremely difficult.

Why they inflate bot numbers

To effectively defend yourself, you need to understand the motives of the attackers. Most often, competitors commission inflations: a rival channel gets flooded with bots to skew the statistics and make it unattractive to advertisers.

This is a method of black PR.

Another common scenario involves freelancers and questionable services that promise rapid audience growth, but in reality, inflate cheap bots to report back to the client. The client sees a nice number of followers, but after a month, the channel turns into a shell.

Some channel owners order inflations themselves, trying to save money and deceive advertisers. Usually, this ends poorly — advertisers can quickly identify fraud. There are also automated spam attacks: bots are subscribed to later use the channel for spamming in comments or for phishing.

In all cases, the goal is the same — either to harm or to artificially inflate metrics. And while in the short term inflations may create the illusion of success, in the long run, they destroy the channel.

Types of bots

Bots vary, and the methods of combating them are different. Today, two main types can be distinguished: regular bots and neurobots.

Regular bots — these are simple scripts or accounts created in bulk. They often have random names with numbers, lack avatars or use standard images, exhibit zero activity (they don't read posts, don't react) and subscribe to hundreds of channels at once. Such bots are easy to spot even visually, and analytics services can identify them by characteristic patterns. Regular bots are cheap and are used in crude manipulations.

Neurobots — these are accounts managed by neural networks. They mimic the behavior of real people: they can react, leave meaningful comments (neurocommenting), subscribe to channels with pauses, and change avatars. They are harder to distinguish from live users, especially when a modern language model is used. Neurobots are created for more subtle attacks: they can lurk in a channel for years without raising suspicion and then activate to spread spam or inflate views. The rise in such bots is a challenge for all administrators.

Services for combating manipulation

It’s impossible to completely eliminate the risk, but there are tools that help identify and remove bots, as well as prevent their emergence.

First of all, these are specialized anti-spam bots. For example, Combat Bot (@CombatBot) analyzes new subscribers and blocks suspicious accounts, allowing you to set the strictness level for verification. Shieldy (@shieldy_bot) was initially created to protect chats from spam, but it can also be used for channels with comment restrictions.

Analytical platforms are also useful. TGStat and Telemetr provide data on subscriber growth, engagement rate (ER), and the ratio of views to subscribers. If you see a sharp spike without visible reasons, it’s a signal to check for possible attacks.

It's also worth mentioning fraud filtering in advertising networks. AdsGram, being an advertising network within Telegram, uses algorithmic fraud filtering when displaying ads. This means that if you place ads through AdsGram, the system automatically filters out low-quality traffic and bots, protecting the advertiser from unnecessary costs and the channel owner from suspicious subscribers. Transparent statistics and quality control are part of the platform.

Don’t forget about manual verification. Periodically, you can export the list of subscribers (via parsers) and check them manually or through specialized services.

However, this can be labor-intensive if the audience is large.

How to secure the channel in advance

Prevention is always more effective than dealing with consequences. Here’s what you can do today.

Privacy and rules settings.

Enable entry restrictions: for example, prohibit subscriptions from accounts younger than a week or without a profile picture. This will cut off some cheap bots. Use captcha when joining through a bot — many anti-spam bots offer verification. In chats, set up anti-flood controls and limit links.Activity monitoring.

Keep an eye on the statistics daily. Use TGStat or the built-in Telegram analytics (for subscription channels). Pay attention to anomalies. Check the activity in comments: if you receive identical messages from accounts with suspicious names, they might be neurobots.Enable slow mode in the chat so that spammers can't clutter the feed.

Using professional tools.

Connect one of the bots for protection (Shieldy, Combat Bot) and configure it for your channel. If you’re running ad campaigns, prefer trusted ad networks like AdsGram, which already have bot filtering built-in.Administrator Training.

If you have a team, explain how to identify suspicious accounts and what to do if an attack is suspected.Create a checklist of actions for a sudden spike in followers.

What (not) to do if you notice a spike on your channel.

Even with the best protection, an attack can break through. The key is to stay calm and act systematically.

First and foremost, document the data: take screenshots of your statistics, save the logs. This will be useful if you want to contact Telegram support or raise complaints with advertisers. Then analyze the source: where did the bots come from? It may be the result of a failed advertising campaign or a targeted attack from competitors.

After that, initiate a cleanup: use bots to remove suspicious accounts. You can temporarily close the channel (make it private) to stop the influx, and then reopen it. Be sure to check your advertising campaigns. If you purchased ads, reach out to the platform. AdsGram, for example, offers detailed statistics and can help you figure out if there was fraud from a specific source.

And finally, enhance your protection: after an attack, review your settings; you may need to add additional verification levels.

Now, let’s talk about what not to do. Don’t buy ads on suspicious exchanges in an attempt to ‘overpower’ bots with real followers — this will only worsen the situation. Do not ignore the problem: bots tend to multiply and attract even more spam. Do not delete everything manually if you’re unsure — you might accidentally ban real followers. And under no circumstances engage in negotiations with attackers:

often they are fraudsters who, after payment, promise to remove the bots but only intensify the attack.

Conclusion

Protecting your channel from bot manipulation and neuro-commenting is not a one-time action, but an ongoing process. The Telegram advertising market is growing, and along with it, the methods of fraud are evolving. Today, simply posting content is not enough for an administrator: you need to have analytical tools, understand bot behavior, and be able to quickly respond to threats.

The key takeaway: security is built on three pillars — proactive settings, regular monitoring, and the use of professional services. Advertising platforms like AdsGram take on part of the workload in filtering out low-quality traffic, which reduces risks for both channel owners and advertisers. An approach based on automation and transparent statistics allows you to focus on project development rather than battling the aftermath of attacks.

Protection against bot manipulation in Telegram