Spam Prevention & Protection

Whilst Telegram is a great platform for building private and public communities there is of course marketing, scam and phishing attempts from bad actors. The Modr8 engine is equipped with many features to combat these issues including a dedicated Spam Prevention Module.

To access the module complete the following steps. Once on the page, the following sections will explain in detail what each of the settings are for and what changes to configuration you may want to make.

1. Select "Manage" on your bot profile from the homepage

2. Scroll to your chat profile

3. Select "Settings" on your chat profile

4. Select "Edit" on the "Spam Prevention" card

You will then be presented with the following card sections and can set up your configuration.

New User Spam Capture

When a new user joins your chat, often their first message may contain a spam link. This is especially true for automated strategies where someone has programmed a bot user to spam marketing and spam messages.

Capturing user who spam as soon as they enter your chat is a great way to stop bad actors quickly

1. Scroll to the "New User Spam Capture" section

2. To block web links in first messages enable the "Contains A Web Link" switch.

3. To block a users first message being a forwarded message enable the "Is A Forwarded Message" switch

4. To block mentioning another channel / group or user in their first message enable "Mentions Channel/User" switch

5. To block a users first message from being some form of media such as polls, animations and videos you should enable "Uses Media" and then select items from the "Remove Media List"

6. The bot will delete the above messages, but also can execute further actions. Select what you would like to happen using the "Execute Action" drop down. This could be do nothing (just delete), mute the user, kicks the user or ban the user. If using mute, you can specify the duration.

New User Restrictions

When new users join your chat, you may wish to restrict the actions they can perform in your chat. Some communities do not want new users to be able to post photos / videos and voice messages for a defined period of time. This type of probationary period can be useful to stop spammers and scammer from sending media right away and they may move to other chats to find easier targets.

New user restrictions can act as a probationary period for new users joining your chat

1. Scroll to "New User Restrictions" section

2. Enable the module by turning on the "Apply Restrictions" switch

3. Select the type of messages you would like to be restricted by selecting fro the "Message Types" drop down list.

4. Toggle whether you wish to stop new users also being able to invite other users to the chat. with the "User Invites" option. This can stop raids and spam inviting bots.

5. Select how long to restrict users for using the "Restricted For" drop downs. Typically we recommend anywhere from 1 hour up to 24 hours works good.

Federated Spam Protection

We utilise a known bad actor/user list which is crowd sourced and maintained by SpamWatch. This list contains hundreds of thousands of peer reviewed spammers who have been issuing bad content to other communities. When this setting is turned on, users who match the list are automatically banned by Modr8.

SpamWatch list matching will auto-ban any users who have been identified as a spammer before.

1. Scroll to the "Federated Spam Protection" section.

2. Toggle the "Enable SpamWatch List" option to turn this setting on.

Banning Button Links & Keyboards

Sending keyboards with bots to the chat used to be a way spammers would provide links to websites and custom commands to collect user data. It's not really so popular anymore but we still keep the option here for good measure in case it becomes a method of attack again.

Some spammers use button links and bot keyboards in chats to create spam for users to click

1. Scroll down to the "Button Links & Keyboards" card section

2. Toggle the "Remove Buttons/Keyboards" toggle to enable the protection

3. Toggle whether you wish to issue a warning using the warning system when the bot identifies users who are spamming in this way. If your general settings have an outcome to exceeding the warning limit then that action will be executed once breached.

Duplicate Message Checking

You may want to stop users spamming the same message over and over. We have noticed that some marketing bots tend to do this over a few hours ot keep their message slowly feeding into your chat. We also see it as an attempt to flood the same message multiple times within seconds to gain attention. This setting will delete and warn users if detected.

Stopping duplicate messages is a great way to prevent slow spamming your chat over a period of time amongst other chatter

1. Scroll to the "Duplicate Message Check" card section

2. Toggle to enable the "Remove Duplicates" module

3. Select whether you wish to "Issue Warning" when a duplicate is detected. This will follow your warning system settings and may cause a kick, ban or mute if breaching your rules.

4. Specify "Duplicate if sent within" time period using the number input and drop-down.

Message Flood Control

The simplest of spam checks is stopping floods of messages being thrown into your chat. This could be the same message or a rotation of messages. This module records the last time a user sent a message against the time they sent their new message. If they breach your specified sensitivity then the message is deleted.

Simple flood message control helps to control the speed people chat at.

1. Scroll to the "Message Flood Control" card section

2. Toggle to enable the "Remove Flood Messages" module

3. Select whether you wish to "Issue Warning" when a flood is detected. This will follow your warning system settings and may cause a kick, ban or mute if breaching your rules.

4. Set a "Flood Detection Sensitivity" this is the time in seconds between previous and current messages. Typically 1 or 2 seconds is enough.

If you have ideas for further spam detection modules please let us know!

❓FAQ & Troubleshooting