Bitcoin Forum

Being scammed in one way or another seems inevitable, what are the clear indicators that a legit-looking service is actually a big scam of some sorts? Is this forum a good place for info to detect a fraudulent scheme?

Scam is normal and do exist either on both online and offline world. Clear indications? Then you should set your own checklist on seeking a scam and a legit one.There are many types of investment actually.This forum isnt a good place infact there are still lots of scammers but mostly people do learn here on how to detect one.

Just don't rely and depend completely on the information you get on the forum. Do your own research. Search every other places on the internet and follow your own instinct. If people offer service that sounds too good, there is most likely something fishy no matter how legitimate they look.

no one will know when scam is come to us, there are no indicators that can detect scam. if one thing is legit and in one day its going to scam, maybe we can see the sign like in hyip, if the sites is make pending payment then its the sign that sites is going to be scam and i think its happen too with another business so we need to be careful.

You should first start by looking at the trust profile of the concerned user because because usually DefaultTrust members leave negative trust on their profiles when someone opens a scam accusation about their services. If the service is new and looks legit as a start then there is no way to know for sure but you could use your logic , If it's a trading website for example then you could measure the trust by the effort that the developers has put on it , If the design is bad as hell , the domain name is free or not professional , no HTTPS , low domain age , all those indicate that the website is not planning to run for long term and run with funds.

There is so-called an obvious scam and scam in the making. Obvious scam obviously has some service that is really out of the context and not realisitic meaning you will think of it as no way "they have something like that" etc.

On the other hand, scam in the making are great at first but eventually will turned to a shit one. No indicators or something that can tell a great site if those will be scam afterwards, just make a wild analyzation out of your factors and criteria as considering a certain site a scammed one.

For general Bitcoin Scam advice You can always check badbitcoin.org. Also, there are sites like scamadvisor.com and similar.

For cloud mining specific scam advice check:

http://www.allcloudminers.com/2016/11/16/cloud-mining-ponzi-scheme/

I have never lost a satoshi.
Never trust an unlicensed business.
Never trust anyone with a guarantee of profit.
Never "invest" bitcoin, spend bitcoin.

Often any sort of guaranteed returns on your investment is a scam. I don't think trusted accounts is a good enough indicator, because of scams like the letitride scam, which used bought accounts. Even lauds, who until recently was a member of staff, got cushy trying to extort money from a scammer on this forum.

Just compare the usual things to abnormal things to find out whether it is a scam or not. Usually I do identify scams by analyzing their income generation procedures. If I find anything abnormal then I will avoid them completely.

When you are not able to understand a business model, just stay away.

There are no obvious traits to tell who is a scammer or not but if they are repeat scam artists a simple google search can reveal who they are and can be avoided.
Sometimes a good service can go south and turn into scam without obvious signs,just like big firms turn into bad debtors..

Some people are smart enough to use a different handle though. If you can't find anything on those guys(including the people you are trading with), then just be careful and use escrow if you think you still can't trust them.

I would add that an absolute requirement of any business deal is a notarized contract. The contract should detail what you must do and how any claims of profit are handled. You will find that all the guarantees made online disappear as soon as the counter-party is presented with a legal contract obligating him/her to honor those claims.  

If the website or service provider has no contact details whatsoever listed on the site, it is not a definite indicator of fraudulent intentions but it is a red flag.
Criminals will usually attempt to convince you to act quickly to avoid missing big profits or high returns.

Do your own research diligently. This forum can not give guarantee 100% to detect fraudulent scheme, but it's good idea if you read or sharing with member here.  

One of scam indicator, they will promise you big bonus, big profit in X days. Dont trust they promise easily, even they have office address, phone number, listed in UK company(in goverment site). Dont you ever ever ever trust them. When i got scam, in the earlier stage they prove us if they are legal in UK, and show us that they're listed in UK company(online certificate website real from UK gov) and finally scam.

Even a legit investment can fail and you lose your money, so it's necessary to be very cautions when sending your money to another's hands. The classic indicators are the high profit return, the rush for referrals (investors trying to scam others to have profit), people asking for money and promising return without say from where the money comes. But surely there are more sophisticated schemes that can lure even expert investors. Checking for reviews is also a good thing to do.

Too difficult for detecting the fraudulent intention. But mostly of the scammer are running his business for well and scam a lot of the people at the end of his business(died).

Look at the spectrocoin and does it really unpredicted before?

Are you talking about exchanges or also other services?
For exchanges, I would say that if it's clear that there's fake volume on them, that's a pretty good indicator of them scamming. Not sure how you can know 100% sure that there's fake volume though.

Otherwise, look for honest reviews on forums, if there are a lot of people that are experiencing problems with withdraws, it's also a pretty good indicator that they're having some sort of problem with funds not being available.

all online investment, packages investment , cloud mining investment nothing legit investment
all only ponzy site and scheme ponzy only wait to scam, cloud mining low profit , low refferal commision and several cloud mining without commision
but someday still scam

so if still want join to ponzy site must smart playing

Well this forum has a lot of scam busters and they are really helping a lot of investors that are doubting to invest into a site. Most of them are doing some deep research and once they found out that it was being run by the same scam guy they will notify us here. Scammers are upgrading nowadays because their modus are upgrading too. But when you think that a site is fishy, just doubt it already.

it is actually easily evitable! you just have to use your brain and think before taking actions.
in my 30 years or so I have never been scammed, and never lose any money ever. and in the past 3-4 years that I have been using bitcoin I have never lost a single satoshi apart from gambling which is understandable.

the first rule is not trusting something that looks too good to be true. as simple as that.

second rule is doing extensive research about that "legit-looking-service". you can use the forum or google to search for all these things and find out what others have to say. and in the end it is up to you to find out if there is any shady business going on behind the scenes that nobody saw before.

Yes, the other people include me use scamadviser.com for detect the scamers,
it can gives the informations about the website.
It is not 100% accurate but at least there are info about the age of website,
estimation of website and other.

the very first scam indicators for me is the unusual big deposit required and sthe shady website, you can tell it easily

also another big one is the promise of an huge returnment which is 100% impossible in any case

but beaware scammers are ebcoming mroe intelligent, i see new hyp promising low return and scamming you after many months, when you start to deposit big amount, they first build the trust with you and then they scam you in the end

Scammers are getting smarter day by day and they are inventing new techniques to scam us. There is no single modus oprandi but the intention is only one i.e – to loot as much as they can. I think finding scammer is not so difficult, as their behavioural analysis would give a quick hint about their intentions. Alternatively, if you are getting much much more than that of other deals then it is the first warning of getting alerted.

Thank you all for the useful information! The main thing I grasp from this thread is that scammers prey upon human emotion like casinos with gambling; so being calm, collected and analytical is the main approach to avoiding scams. Also nothing in life is free and always assume and prepare for the worst.

Scammers are everywhere there's large amount of people who are scammed during transition of bit coins you can't just google and trust every sites. 

If you don't want to be scammed, then do something worthwhile. Scammers are every were and they target are greedy people. Many people what to reap were they do not soils and because of this fell into the hands of scammers and evil people. Set an Investment principle for yourself, most schemes you see online are scammers and ponzi scheme.

Yes, the simple indication must be : anything out of practical.

In other words, no one will give away free money. If we come across any impractical money generation promises, they could be a potential scam. Their usual target starts when we get greedy, hence when we are staying protected then we can easily avoid them.

it is hard to detect scammed but maybe we can know the sign for getting scam and i think this forum is not the place to detect a fraudulent activity because many forum in out there have scam person too and not just in here. the solution for avoid scam is we need to read the review from other people about the service, we need to understand about the service and only use free money to buy that service.

Thats why scams do always exist no matter what because there are really some stupid greedy people who always feed them their own money because they do still invest on those ponzi hyip schemes that why they always got victimized on these scammers because of those greedy emotions.

Yes. I agree with your First Rule. There's a lot of investment site that says it
will give you a return of 100%-130% in 5 days. I giggle and LOL when I
always see sites that promise that kinds of return. Recently, I joined a whatsapp
group of a new investment site just to see how this will pan out, so initially
it was giving investors returns to some of them are re-investing but guess what,
the site went offline and says they are doing some maintenance but unfortunately
it was too late for a lot of people it was a scam!!!. The "legit looking website"
is still up and still scamming as of now.

Promise of a big return is a huge indicator.

Sudden change in how things work is another indicator.
For example, most scammers try to build confidence then change the way they want you to send money, ask you to start communicating with a different account, etc.
Changing the deposit method, email address/ account name is a big red flag something suspicious is happening.

Wandering through Forum i found many cases where scam came from very trustful members, this only can be signal for you to be very careful, and not to invest everything you have and something you can afford to loose. Sometimes signals won't appear. ;)

Based on my experience, yeah, "experience", i was scammed almost a year ago by a company that is saying a 50$ per week earning, upon hearing that my ears clapped out of joy and never had a second thought of joining. After that they are gone and my 20$ is gone and nowhere to be found.

I also had an experience by investing $15 as registration fee and by just doing data entry job that I can earn $100 or more depending on the data that I will make. But, I've been doing data entry for almost 12 hours but I just got $0.5 so I stop it already, is is such a waste of my time. But, thankful I was a victim because of that I met bitcoin.

As you have said, Scam is inevitable that it has become part of our lives I mean they are everywhere. Yes this is one of the good

source of information when it comes to tracking scams but just like I said it is one means there are other methods to gather and

confirm a information and it would be best to try it all since we are talking about money. Some scams are easy to spot but some

are not which is the scary part . What I'm doing always is to not get involve myself into suspicious stuffs and always doing my

research.

Yes this forum is definitely a good place to find out which is a scam and not.  If someone offers something to you and you find out nothing about them here in the forum, that's probably just one of the scam attempt. so make sure they are here in the forum and had posted an ANN thread.

You see them everyday with new accounts in the forum offering investments that are too good to be true. Its not just investments actually, some are selling something else like digital products and so on. If they mentione about sending your BTC first, thats something to be alarmed.

Great to be here. Some told me to stay away from people with red trust but they also told me that some have red marks due to politics. But generally forum looks good and maybe not perfect but safe.

The best way to stay away from scammers Is that just trade with positive trust members.
Negative trust members are usually scammers. And even to trade with neutral trust members is risky. Anyone can be a scammer.
If a person says that he will give you the item first then you should be good at your part.
Very few people are there who agree to send first. If everyone be fair on their part, there will be no scammers.
But people have to cheat and earn money in a negative way.
No-one can change them. It's just that their parents have not taught them or brought up properly.

There will be no guarantee that a trusted member will stay same. That is the reason we must always trade only through escrow. I have experience with one seller who was honest for first two dealing but cheated me for the third time when I sent him relatively higher amount than last 2 times. Escrow is the only solution.

Actually the service can go down anytime indeed and while some obvious signs are : stopping the withdrawals from members while appreciating the deposits and everything else. Moreover another sign is the site's admin would try to show as if he is busy and cannot reply. In those cases just don't leave any money in those sites/services.

There are always some signs to find whether a particular service is gonna go down/scam like when cryptsy got scam they blocked user's withdrawals initially and they were allowing deposits on the contrary.

This forum might help you, whereas you can open discussion about any company if you doubt it, bitcointalk has a wide range of users who are active in most of the earning money areas, in addition you can make your own list of indicators by browsing the history of the companies that scammed their users, because they repeat the same methods, and likely the scammers will open a new business, so they will not stop scamming.

Listing them would really be a long job and its quiet complicated since there are lots of scam websites including to those previous ones i think there are list but i dont remember the site or link which is updated showing possible scam websites.You are right if you do have doubt on a certain company you can always ask in the community and would even heard the best advices and answers regarding on your querie.

It is really hard to detect, the one that I know is the site is registered using a fake identity, and the site offering over high profit then the site will be potential a scammed site, and then the site is asking to deposit without giving the detail how they earning the profit, asking the people in this forum will be a great idea to avoid being scammed

It's not hard to detect wether the site will scam you. You can see if an investment is scam ad they show  when the investment will go, or how will they earn money from it. Ofcourse, if there is no concrete project, investors will just promis to earn, but not the developer itself, then that is scam. Although if at first you get your payout, it'll end up of not releasing the payout, hebce that is how they  scam people. For me, the more the platform is beautiful, the more it's impossible.

There were many history that known persons turned scammers. Hence it cannot be a right criteria.
Moreover how you will check whether a site is registered with legit information unless you are a local resident where that business is registered ? Additionally, many domain registrations allow anonymous registrations for security reasons.

only half an answer, but one perfect indicator is when the presentation says "no scam". lol

Most of the people put that in the presentation. I guess most of the HyiP which promise you to yield high-interest rates are going to be scammed sooner or later.
Best advice is to check on your own about the site before investing a penny.

Investigating before investing on certain site would really be needed as an investor because we do value our money and we should really be aware on the possible scam sites that might victimized us and would ran off on our money.There are lots of indicators actually and some of it can be notice obviously if you do have commonsense.

Yeah and unfortunately some of us would learn this the hard way. I just lost around 0.7 btc to a scam and boy what a way to learn my lesson. I got too enticed with what they said about earning 150% of your capital in 5days if you invest and guess what, i did accumulate 150% of what i invested but i can't withdraw anything. Lessons learned the hard way.

The one which claims to give you big return in short term is clear indication of them being scam.
Doubler, HYIP and cloud mining services lies under this category. 

It is so sad for seeing cloud mining in a list of potential scam services. Because many cloud mining services are coming with similar promises like big returns in very short period of time. But this alone will not be a definite measurement as some services come with all realistic benefits yet with planned scam intention in slow progress. 

Every time when you see crowdfunding or collecting of funds within members of an group. one already has idea how to steals. This is nature of humans, mix this opportunity with low moral and you will get answers. Money is magnet for scams!
If you survive, mining pools who don't paying, corrupt exchanges, wallets with backdors, newbie malicious links, fake pumps and dumps..Then you will probably be smart to rethink investing in ICO, IPO,ITO!

the one rule i always follow:
"if its too good to be true, its not true" just follow that rule and you will avoid every scam

Don't invest in easy earn sites or ICO Don't try to invest in that coins that have low market value for you not to be scammed. The only reason why people is being scam is they are trying to earn with easy money. Don't be fooled by that platform because the only way to earn is to work hard like trading. Because that is legit way you will gamble your luck but for professionals they are doing it with strategy so I will suggest that don't invest in easy money platform.

To be perfectly frank there are 2 types of scams, easily noticeable with clear red flags all over

- Unusually high investment returns with little or no risk.
- Unregistered company, no address, no background, fake staff/no staff presented.
- Secretive strategies of making money/lack of transparency.

and second kind - elaborate scams - designed to be amazingly convinced or designed to be fair investment but later turning out to be exit scams.

You can't normally find out about 2nd kind until it is too late.

Most of us do really learn from our past mistakes some may learn from past experience among other which they do have already knowledge on those things and could able to avoid on possible scam sites that do exist today. We do learn that theres no easy money even on online world.

Yes we need to learn from our past mistakes and make that mistake for our experience in future and more careful, if you doubtful about the site or investment you want to join is better to ask another person you trust and reliable in that regard, take his advice as a consideration, and do not always see a big profit but also understand the existing risks.

never indicator tools can detected scamer
is good all transaction use reputable escrow trusted green account, and then all online investment hyip ponzy site only wait to scam, is you see some people promotion open investment is scam indicator

if transaction not want escrow is scam indicator

Well usually I used http://www.scamadviser.com/ to check the website for risk,
if I want make investing on the website although it is not 100% trues but at least
there are the informations about the website also I always use forum bitcointalk
and for other informations especially the website related bitcoin.

If you want to look for the investment in any site or for anything then first of all you should check details or reviews in the google at sites like scamanalyze and the most of the best trusted place to see reviews about the any site is this forum .
Usually the all scam site comes across a bitcoiner who are in the forum and also to those with their friends who are not in this forum .
So at least search about that site in this forum if you got answer about your question then good if you don't found then create own thread to aska and take review for your particular site .

Searching for informations first before tending to put money is really our responsible and you are right there are sites that we could able to use as reference and might help with our doubts related to a site and we should keep searching until we satisfied on what is the status of a certain site.

It doesn't take 5 minutes to know whether an offer has the possibility of it being scam when you know which is too good to be true and not. Sometimes analyzing just the whole offer can be determined already whether its a scam especially if the other party will insist you to send first  the btc.

But if you mean ICO, it does have some grains of truth whether the developers are scamming indirectly.

There are a few factors warning you of a scam :

1 - If it's too good to be true (be rich in 5 days ! Double your bitcoins in 24 hours!)
2 - If the owners of the website are anonymous
3 - If they don't explain clairly "how" they are going to make profit

The golden rule is to always get some informations before investing. If you are unsure, ask on the forum.
But also : check on the forum (search with keywords), check on the internet, check the trust on the forum, check the comments about them on the social media, etc..

But you can understand via trusted and feedback their accounts. Most of the newbie and low rank member services will be consider as scam when it is without proper escrow and without guidelines about the services.

Usually scams can be easily spotted especially on investment sites promising too much interest,High Yielding deposits, double your moiney etc. this sites will not last longer.Some are also using MLM's or pyramiding scheme or ponzi schemes which turns into frauydulent over a period of time.

If a person promised you not so believeable interest,  I think its a red flag and needs to be scrutinized further. Also when dealing here in bitcointalk, it is much better to use an escrow.

The most important thing before investing is to do proof check on your own. There are many good sites where the owner is anonymous, but they have given Good returns for the investment. On the other hand every hyip site have turned towards scamming sooner or later.
The key to make profit with hyip is to invest and cash out in the very beginning stage of the site.

As a bitcoin trader and as i experienced to be scammed you must not trust those people most specialy on facebook that did not post their true picture as ther profile picture and also scammers will not really going to pay first if they are buying bitcoins. So if you are a real buyer or seller do not give your bitcoin or pay first have assurance and don't think about doing it also because it is a bad thing to cheat.

Talking about making transaction throughout social medias it somehow risky if you arent vigilant enough and you didnt take any precautionary measures and seeking for scam indications. We should really not trust specially on dummy accounts chances of that person is a scammer is high.

I can actually understand why people are not posting real photos on facebook and some other social media sites. But you'd rather not get involve social media wit hit. if you want to make transactions do a record and maybe do it here in the forum with their real account. All there is to keep in mind is that you need not to make transaction to such person particularly, there are lots of people to transact and deal with. Let it pass if you think he can potentially scam you.

You can kind of say that this forum is good for scam detecting but if you see different sites have different scam indicator.
Like for example take this forum itself I a person is exchanging his bitcoins for perfect money and he's a newbie. He refuses to use escrow and tells that he is trusted. So that if one indicator of getting scammed.

I would say that this forum is a good place for info to detect a fraudulent scheme because many people is visiting this website and helps everyone of course. Well here everyone has experience in some kind of services or in another subjects and we can review any website if you think that's scam.
Mostly both, scam websites and real legit websites looks great designed and that's because to attrackt clients. To my mind if website has US green layout ssl, every needed documents, office and etc, than 90% such website is legit. P.S don't trust UK green layout ssl websites, it's easy to gain such ssl in UK and that's why many scam and investment websites use such ssl. In usa's situation, it's not like that way.

Moreover one reference resource will not capable of all the types of scamming attempts nor newly turned / newly launched scams are really hard to be referenced. Only by having self knowledge people will get chances to find out and avoid scams. So, there would be no general guidelines could be possible for finding out a scam.

But, being individual we can have some definitions to identify scams. Like many people mentioned here, anything out of normal in terms of money generation or in simple words just equivalent to fake promises must be subject to consider as scam.

We don't know exactly if the service is trusted to get  invest because there are some are legit at first but in the last are scam. Remember, how did they earn when you invest to them and how did you earn also when you put invest, make sure if they earn. Always think in advance if that service is paying until the last of the project.
In this forum, you will know the project or service if it is legit or not.

the most website that i know is hyip because they are legit in the beginning and then after 10 days later, the site having problem when we want to make withdraw. the other is cloud mining but cloud mining is long enough than hyip sites but in the end cloud mining is getting scam too like hyip.

Do not call them legit for first 10 days. Those 10 days are just the baiting period to make you come back with more capital to invest with them.

If you are looking at their business model and the way how they are generating their source of income then you will definitely identify them as scam from day one itself and there will be no need to wait for first 10 days. We are failing to steady the indications clearly and falling with them because they are running their businesses as the legit in the beginning days.

There are many easy methods are available to find out a cloud mining whether they are legit or not. Because hash power contribution is verifiable but people start investing with them just by seeing their photoshop proof itself.

I never called those sites as legit mate. They are scams but we can scam those scammers if we are a little smart and fast to know those type of sites and make profit from them. I know that it's risky but if you have the skills and with some luck we can make some profit with those hyips in the early days.
They all are scammers, sooner o later they'll scam everyone..

Not in this forum, but we can where referral exchanges are allowed people are rushing to find referrals for those sites in those 10 days. They will stop promoting them only they face no payments from them.
People do fail to find the indication of getting scam when they are intensely looking for making money in quick time. Their greedy will go in favour of scammers.

Anything which will target your greedy must be a scam.

The hyip site scammers God is greed of the people and newbies, I have seen so many newbies searching for referrals everywhere thinking that they'll make a fortune out of a dollar o two. If everyone starts asking some basic questions to themselves before investing then automatically these hyip sites will go down in no time.

Yes you are right.
Many people may offer you things that may seem to be very attractive .
But you have to be smart enough to judge that deal.
The best way to judge a scammer is see his trust-
If it's negative then do not trust at all.
If it's neutral still do not trust.
If it's positive then you may trade with him but still be alert.
And also don't get into trap of some services,
unless they are from reliable sources like famous campaigns.
After getting this much info I don't think you will have any problem.