As of May 23, 2025, the traffic in Telegram and other messaging platforms has become a battleground between reality and deception, with bot farms distorting the digital landscape on an unprecedented scale.
The line between genuine users and fabricated activity is increasingly blurred, posing a significant challenge to platforms, advertisers, and users alike.
The Geography of Telegram Bot Farms
Bot farms operate globally, with distinct regions specializing in different aspects of fake traffic production:
- Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Philippines: These countries host massive click farms, generating hundreds of thousands of fake accounts daily to inflate engagement metrics.
- China, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Israel: Key suppliers of fake traffic, these nations run sophisticated operations selling fraudulent activity through websites and private networks.
- Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan: These regions produce “realistic” AI-driven bots with advanced automation, often backed by players with ties to government or organized crime.
- USA, Germany, Italy, UAE: Even heavily regulated markets are implicated, with bot services surfacing despite stricter oversight.
The methods vary, but the outcome is the same: the global proliferation of fake user networks has become a systemic problem, undermining the integrity of platforms like Telegram.
How Bot Farms Are Built
Bot farms rely on a combination of tools and techniques to create and sustain their operations:
- NFT Numbers [+888]: The introduction of anonymous NFT numbers via platforms like Fragment provided scammers with a loophole for mass bot registration. These numbers are used not only on Telegram but also to create accounts on external services like the OKX exchange. Even after KYC requirements were introduced, black markets offer verification services for as little as $20–$30, keeping the scheme alive.
- SIM Card Farms: In countries with cheap mobile plans, SIM cards are bulk-purchased to register accounts, ensuring a steady supply of bots.
- Automation via Telegram API: Scripts leverage Telegram’s API to mass-register accounts and mimic user behavior, using proxies and dynamic IPs to evade detection.
- Bot Verification Tactics: Bots simulate human activity — joining chats, viewing posts, pausing between actions, and subscribing to channels. Advanced scripts add “noise” like story views, poll participation, and fake conversations to create the illusion of a real user. However, these bots often lose activity at deeper levels, revealing their artificial nature.
Anonymous Numbers: A Tool Devalued by Misuse
Originally designed to enhance privacy and simplify access to Telegram’s ecosystem without revealing real phone numbers, anonymous numbers have instead become a cornerstone of illicit schemes.
They fuel bot networks, inflate metrics, and falsify activity. Services renting out anonymous numbers have emerged as a front for “legitimate” businesses, but in reality, they support the same mass-fraud operations — often leasing out less than 1% of their bot armies to maintain the facade of legality.
The Role of Mini Apps and Motivated Traffic
Motivated traffic through Mini Apps has become a perfect conduit for bot networks.
Founders of these apps could tighten controls—introducing stricter tasks, real filters, or higher verification thresholds — but they often don’t. The reason? Inflated metrics look good in reports and allow them to sell clients “the best price per subscriber.”
This short-term gain comes at the cost of long-term trust, as the gap between real and fake engagement widens.
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The Real Threat
The proliferation of bot farms isn’t just a nuisance — it’s a fundamental threat to the integrity of digital ecosystems. Fake traffic distorts analytics, misleads advertisers, and erodes user trust.
On Telegram, where privacy and freedom have long been selling points, the unchecked growth of bot-driven schemes risks turning those strengths into liabilities.
Founders may tout impressive numbers, but there are no “clean clients” in this game—every participant is complicit in perpetuating the fraud. Until platforms like Telegram take decisive action to dismantle these networks, the line between reality and illusion will continue to blur, with real users paying the price.
