I checked 283 "top" Telegram crypto groups - most of them are fake

[Callout]

Did some research on Telegram groups as a traffic source and ended up looking at 283 of them, pulled from public ranking sites sorted by message volume and monthly active users.

Rough breakdown of what I found by actually reading recent messages in each:

~20% real communities with people talking to each other
~20% real groups, but drowned in ad spam
~60% effectively criminal ad boards

That last bucket was worse than I expected. Not "low quality" - I mean groups openly running ads for counterfeit currency, stolen card cashouts, and money laundering services quoting exchange rates. Several of these were named things like "Bitcoin <Country>" and looked completely normal from the outside.

The part worth flagging for anyone here: the ranking sites sort by message volume and active users. Spam bots posting every minute score extremely well on both. So the ranking is actively selecting FOR the groups you don't want.

If you're evaluating Telegram groups, member count and activity metrics tell you nothing. You have to open them and read.

[NoDepositCasinos]

Telegram definitely has a dark side that scammers know how to exploit really well (as is the case with everything involving anonymity and money transactions). The tricky part is that a lot of these groups look totally normal from the outside. Sometimes they started with a legit purpose that got lost along the way, and sometimes scammers duplicate legit groups to confuse new people.

As you said, nobody should jump into them without reading first, and definitely be careful what you click on there.

[Teodora B]

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

[kontractor]

I'm using manual check only for now. Any tools you'd recommend to check if the chat is decent? Since telemeter is dead couldn't find anything decent (not saying telemeter was good, but probably it was the best option).

[GlobalPokerSites]

Telegram, especially channels are rife with spam and phishing links. Not surprised by this at all. They definitely have a spam issue.

[Affilify]

over 50% of the internet is botted nowadays

[flam]

Did some research on Telegram groups as a traffic source and ended up looking at 283 of them, pulled from public ranking sites sorted by message volume and monthly active users.

Rough breakdown of what I found by actually reading recent messages in each:

~20% real communities with people talking to each other
~20% real groups, but drowned in ad spam
~60% effectively criminal ad boards

That last bucket was worse than I expected. Not "low quality" - I mean groups openly running ads for counterfeit currency, stolen card cashouts, and money laundering services quoting exchange rates. Several of these were named things like "Bitcoin <Country>" and looked completely normal from the outside.

The part worth flagging for anyone here: the ranking sites sort by message volume and active users. Spam bots posting every minute score extremely well on both. So the ranking is actively selecting FOR the groups you don't want.

If you're evaluating Telegram groups, member count and activity metrics tell you nothing. You have to open them and read.

You didnt hit on the part where a simple message from you into those groups expose you to a bombardment of texts from scammers who want to exploit your naivety. 🤣🤣🤣
Telegram is a hell hole ngl!

[GlobalPokerSites]

You didnt hit on the part where a simple message from you into those groups expose you to a bombardment of texts from scammers who want to exploit your naivety. 藍藍藍
Telegram is a hell hole ngl!

Commenting on popular public crypto channels is a quick way to get flooded with phishing links/scams.

[CasinosBroker]

Thanks for sharing.

I think people should be careful with Telegram...

[Bettogames]

Thanks for the info.
I'm finding out that this is so very true.