Bot Update v1.23.0:
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- New Fonts and styles in Image Captchas!

- Support to configure groups from private chat Bot conversation (DM - Direct Messages; PM - Private Messages). Check new commands /connect and /disconnect from private Bot conversation.

- New command /checkcfg to show current group captcha settings.

- Now just Admins can use commands in a group (commands send by other users will not get any response).

Basic Bot Setup
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If you are not yet familiar with Telegram Bots, and don't know how to add and setup JoinCaptchaBot in your group. Here it is a basic setup guide:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joincaptchabot/how-to-add-setup-bot-groups

Bot Update v1.24.0:
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- Allow/Deny messages with links to websites (URLs) in a group. Use the new commands /url_disable and /url_enable to configure it (default is enable-allow).

- Removed some complex fonts from captcha images and added new readable ones.

- Save RAM data when Bot shutdown and restore it when it turns on again (to keep persistent functionality if Bot is restarted).

- Some Italian, Russian, Ukrainian and Arabic texts updated-translated.

- Persian language support added (use "/language fa" to use it).

Bot Update v1.25.0:
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- New commands /remove_all_msg_kick_on and /remove_all_msg_kick_off to configure Bot to remove all messages sent by an user that didn't solve a captcha. Default is off, and that means text messages remains after user is kicked without solving the captcha, turn it on to also remvoe this messages.

- Timeout for auto-remove Bot messages handled in seconds (instead minutes) and time to auto-remove some messages reduced to 20 seconds (now captcha solve and kick messages are automatically deleted in 20s).

Bot Update v1.25.1:
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- Fix to allow new commands /url_disable, /url_enable, /remove_all_msg_kick_off and /remove_all_msg_kick_on to also be configured from private chat with /connection to group.

Bot Update v1.25.2:
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- Updated (translated) some Brazilian, Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian languages texts, thanks to external contributors.

New Paypal Donation Platform, Ko-Fi!
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A couple of months ago, Buymeacoffee platform stops supporting Paypal as donation payment method, and now it only supports credit card donations.

I have check for an alternative platform to bring back the Paypal option, and I have found that Ko-Fi platform fits this need. So now, if you want to make a donation to get @pro_join_captcha_bot usage on your groups you have two options:

1. Use BuyMeACoffee and make the donation with a credit card following this instructions:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joincaptchabot/joincaptchabot-large-groups

2. Use Ko-Fi and make the donation with Paypal following this instructions:
https://ko-fi.com/post/JoinCaptchaBot-for-large-groups-V7V3ANADF

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BuyMeACoffee platform:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joincaptchabot

The new Ko-Fi platform:
https://ko-fi.com/joincaptchabot

Bot Update v1.25.3:
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Small update with new Bot languages:

- Added Finish language support.
/language fi

- Added Hebrew language support.
/language he

Bot Update v1.26.0:
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🚀 New features:

- Now you can configure welcome message automatic deletion time through /welcome_msg_time command.

Examples:

Delete welcome message after 30 seconds:
/welcome_msg_time 30 sec

Delete welcome message after 5 minutes:
/welcome_msg_time 5 min

Delete welcome message after 1 minute:
/welcome_msg_time 1 min

⚙️ Improvements:

- Python Telegram Bot framework updated to v13.12 to support last Bot API v6.

🛠 Fixes:

- Fix for /cmd_remove_all_msg_kick_on not removing messages on button and poll captcha modes.

- Kick users by unban_chat_member request instead ban+unban to avoid some issue on Bot not unrestricting users when kicks.

Bot Update v1.26.1:
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⚙️ Improvements:

- Some German language texts translated.

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🛠 Fixes:

- Fix bug that allows users to solve "math" mode captchas without implicit writing the equation result.

Bot Update v1.26.4:
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⚙️ Improvements:

- Ignore URL protection for channel post redirection messages to configured channel discussion group.

🛠 Fixes:

- Fix some markdown escaping problem on welcome messages.

- Fix to recover the detection and removal of messages forwarded by "users" who have not completed the captcha (considered as Spam).

Bot Update v1.27.0:
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🚀 New features:

- Restrict new join members send messages and media permissions during captcha (don't allow send messages on button/poll mode, and only allow send text messages in required image captcha modes).

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⚙️ Improvements:

- Automatically remove Bot commands messages from non-admin users after a while.

- Now users will be Ban from the group after 3 custom poll captcha fails (after 5 fails in other captcha modes).

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🛠 Fixes:

- Fixed Ban users that fail to solve the captcha after some retries in "button" and custom "poll" modes.

Notice:
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The latest Telegram update added the ability to configure groups to display messages in different chats, by "topics".

This is a very nice feature for Telegram, however joincaptchabot may not currently work properly in groups configured with topics. It does work, but new group members may not notice the captcha message because it is not displayed in any topic, and then they may be kicked out by the Bot without noticing the captcha process.

If Telegram makes some change these days to show the "non-topic" messages in some default "topic chat", it would solve the problem.

Anyway, I will add support for "topic" groups in the next version of joincaptchabot.

Notice:
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New Today's Telegram Update added a default topic named "General" to all groups configured to work with topics, and now any message that doesn't specify any topic will appear on that topic, messages like new users joins or Bots default messages.

This solves the issue of joincaptchabot not working in topics groups. Now the Bot captcha message will appear in that "General" topic and the captcha process works again.

However, users who haven't updated their Telegram App won't be able to see that topic, and that means they will be kicked out of groups without realizing they have to solve a captcha. So I recommend disabling joincaptchabot in groups with topics for a few days until all users have updated their Telegram App.

Bot Update v1.29.0:
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⚙️ Improvements:

- For topics groups: Bot command responses are sent now to the specific topic where the command was written (instead of General topic).

- Improved detection and auto-deletion of 4 characters wrong captcha messages from users.

- Normalization and common way to delete messages.

- Updated all joincaptchabot code to support new python-telegram-bot v20.

- Support for asyncio and replaced all Threads with coroutines.

- Let System Signals detection be handled by PTB and have a clear and safe exit of the application.

- Use logging module for all components.

- Modernize some python code (i.e. f-string)

- Updated and added missing docstrings for all functions.

- Update all project components code-style according to PEP8 and checks-fixed style issues through pylint and flake8 tools.

- Some explicit data types included to the code, and some checks-fixes with pyright and mypy.

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No news functionalities has been added in this version update, however a lot of improvements have been done to the code. This will help joincaptchabot in the future to allow get new functionalities and stay updated to new Telegram features.

The use of python-telegram-bot v20, which is a major version update and is not retrocompatible with other previous versions, breaks a lot of things, so some critical code has been modified to support this new PTB version, so possible issues/bugs could have been introduced. Please, if you find any issue/bug, report it: https://github.com/J-Rios/TLG_JoinCaptchaBot/issues

Due now all the Bot concurrency is now handled through asyncio coroutines instead of threads, there will be some impact in the CPU overload usage, it could be better or worst, only time will say that.

For the moment, only public-free @join_captcha_bot account has been updated with this version. The private-pro @pro_join_captcha_bot account keeps the previous stable version to avoid any malfunction on it, and will be updated in the future when it is completely stable.

Bot Update v1.29.2:
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- New language support, Uzbek! Now you can set Bot language to Uzbek (/language uz).

- Minor bug fixes.

- Set current version as stable (updated main GIT branch) and @pro_join_captcha_bot updated to use it.

Bot Update v1.30.0:
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🚀 New features

Now you can configure a different type of punishment that the Bot will apply when an user fail a captcha through a new command /restriction.

Available restrictions to punish an user that has fail the captcha:

/restriction kick - Kick the user from the group (default behavior that the Bot was using; after multiple fails, the user will be banned).

/restriction mute - Don't allow the user to write messages in the group for 24h (after this time, the restriction will be automatically removed).

/restriction media - Don't allow the user to write media messages (image, video, audio, etc) in the group for 24h (after this time, the restriction will be automatically removed).

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⚙️ Improvements

- Now the Bot will automatically delete "TheJoinCaptchaBot removed USER" message when an user is removed from a small groups.

- Now the users can solve the captcha even if they add spaces between the numbers (i.e. "1 2 3 4").

- The World Wide Web Top Level Domain list file for URL detections has been updated.

- Some updates on Korean language texts.

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🛠 Fixes

- Fixed wrong detection of some texts as URL and causing the Bot to remove messages due wrong spam.

- Fixed potential non-working restrictions due manage_topic handled as None.

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Hope you find some of this useful.
Happy Christmas!

Bot Update v1.31.0:
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🚀 New features

In order to make captcha messages be more universal and understandable by people who do not speak the group language, you can now make the Bot send its captcha messages in 2 languages, the group language + English. This feature is disabled by default so the Bot will behave same as always, but you can enable it with the new /bilanguage command.

Enable "english + group language" captcha messages:
/bilanguage yes

Disable and send single language captcha messages:
/bilanguage no

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⚙️ Improvements

- Due groups that uses "topics" could make new members to miss the captcha challenge, the maximum number of captcha fails before Ban has been increased.

- Added project support to setup and use a Reverse Proxy between Telegram Server and Bot running machine for Bot deployments (see updated project README file on how to configure a reverse proxy).

- New setting to configure if Bot connection with Telegram Server must be done by "Polling" or "Webhook" (CAPTCHABOT_USE_WEBHOOK).

- Some project code files relocated and "sources" directory name changed to "src".

- Added new scripts and usage Makefile for a better Bot maintenance and support.
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🛠 Fixes

- Fixed group Bot language change not working through private chat (/connect mechanism) when the user want to set the same language that it has in the Telegram client.

- Fixed number of maximum consecutive captcha fail retries before Ban setting value changes not working.

This is how Captcha Message looks like if you set the new bilanguage feature:

/bilanguage yes

Bot Update v1.31.1:
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Just a minor update to add Serbo-Croatian (EX-YU) language support.

You can set this new language in a group by:
/language sr