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Guys, do share your tips on how to identify scams. To widen the knowledge for people who are honestly trying to invest and gain earnings with their hard earn money!

This is the first step in finding the problem through the white paper and the technical route, and then check that the code is open source, and then Google searches for the team's history, which is probably all.

it's very difficult to identify a scam project, but I recommend not to be tempted by big bonuses. always look at the background of the developer and his team, if any linkedin is better and already listed on some rating sites. the last thing, do a discussion on their social media group, announcement thread and your local community.

the best way is never touch any ICO!

Actually it is not always the case that it requires a lot of efforts to identify scam projects. A poor website, frequent grammar mistakes in marketing materials, project team without track record, etc are all signs of shitty projects. All you need to notice these signs are time and attention.

I like to have a look at this page. Sometimes can help you a bit.

https://icobench.com/

To find a good ICO you have to first of all look at project's goals and team. Goals should be real and demanded by society. Team should consist of professionals and people with clear and decent background. Also project's roadmap has to provide the information about the development plans. If these rules are not followed a project is usually a scam.

The purpose of the project. Always ask yourself why the project is launched, what benefit will it give to people?
Also look at the strength of the team, whether they're on LinkedIn. I make it a point of duty to check whether the team members are actually involved in the project on their LinkedIn page.
Other things I look at are the white papers, grammar (if there are much typos, I get very skeptical) and the quality of the website.

There is so many signal like: big bonuses, hidden Dev team and Fake Advisors, poor website;
You always need to join in social media group like Telegram, Facebook Group, Discord.

it's very difficult to identify scams, but in the following way will be helpful

1. read and understand about their whitepaper, see about they project and roadmap.
2. View they Team, find out about them in Linkedin
3. Join in the community like telegram, reddit, in here you will know more clearly about the project

Don't be easily attracted by huge profits

thanks guys! your advise and tips to identify a scam ICO might be helpful to those who just started their journey in the crypto-world. Cheers mates!

The project without proper whitepaper and project teams are the signs of scam ICO so you need to do research about the project before doing any investment.But the best project teams have many advertisement platforms on social media,websites and in forum also so you can identify good ICO with these also.

try to check the web page, whitepaper, and also the ICO social media. usually if the ICO is a website fraud and their whitepaper will be a little confusing and also their social media will rarely update information, especially telegram.

Check the team members & their credentials. Find them on websites such as LinkedIN & compare the credentials given there & on the website. Read the white paper & flag events that don't add up.

I agree with most of the previous comments to follow social media, reading whitepaper thoroughly. Research CEO and team's portfolio. If there was something dodgy then it would pop up on Telegram IMO. To give you an example Signatum turned out as a scam. Discord channel went quiet. CEO went missing within an excuse of vacation. Very first signal. Communcation channel to follow projects is a must. Scumbags can trick many investors but not every single one.

Yeah it's difficult to determine if it's scam or not.
For me, I will do some research base on ico reviews it's available online. Many websites are doing some reviews. You can have ideas from them how the project goes, also they give ratings I think the highest is 5.0.
It's a good help to decide where you want to invest your money in ico.

Seriously, it is becoming harder and harder to identify real projects/ICO from scam ICOs. Scammers are getting smarter and they can easily mimic a real project and keep you in until the very last moment they turn into a scam. You can follow the guidelines given by those above but the real trick is to be real active and watch carefully the devs and admins of the project.

One of the worst things in an ICO is when the company has no assets and cannot even find their own ICO.
I mean, God ICOs can hire good  bounty campaign manager and have more resources on advertising their ICO into social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and much more.
Bad ICOs are managed by low ranked forum members like Newbies and Jr members. That's the first I want to consider before joining signature bounty campaign.

It is better to learn to identify the coolest projects. And then the task of identifying the scam projects will disappear by itself  :)
But in general, of course, we need complex systems and tools that will identify scams at the earliest stages.
There are several ways for this, but this is a separate topic.

Thank you fo sharing guys

I think one of the ways to determine if an ICO is a scam is through identifying the person managing it. If the bounty manager has negative trust then most likely it does an illegal or bad thing to obtain it. If the bounty manager is a newbie then it would be hard to identify if its for real or a scam this would push you to know the person or the team behind that ICO. If those team or individuals has negative comments or reputation then most likely their ICO is also the same as they were.

I typically keep an eye out for people buzzing about ICO's on this forum. It seems like if enough long-time members are excited about a project, it's pretty likely that they've done their homework and found the project to be worth looking into.

in most cases, many old-timers rely on their intuition, and how they can determine the project's prospects. I, too, many times draw attention to the actions of the legendary or heroes of the participants, I explore their example. But you need to learn more about the selected projects, and learn to analyze and make choices yourself.

usually ico who has an abnormal promo often leads to a scam. Yes, experience and research is what you should do. it's hard to tell the difference, the point is you still have to involve knowledge and experience.

hi guys,
What is the main creteria? lack of the white paper?

Mere checking through all the social media accounts of the ICO will tell much about the ICO. The posts on their social media page will let you know if its scam or not.

My tips is simple:  just follow Ian and some professional ico investors  ;D That is the best way to choose the right ico to invest.

It is really hard for me to identify if a project is a scam, I just rely on my gut feeling about it then I do some researching about it to confirm my doubt. Usually, if an ICO is offering a huge amount of bonuses and you see that it is so good to be true, then it is mostly a scam but if they can prove their claim then you are in for a good project. It would be best if we could identify scams easily so that we can avoid getting scammed in the future.

One guy here on the forum found detailed information about the founders of ICO, which showed that they are scammers. According to him, the information is available. The links were open. Thus, information can be found if you try. In addition, this guy was offered to make such a service and monetize it. I do not know if he thought seriously about this, but it would be very welcome. It is better to pay a little for the information than to lose a lot of money invested.

ICO scam  can't be really identified but the best way is to avoid altcoins with high bonuses and also look into the background and rating of the builder.   ::)

We can't actually predict what is the run of ICO's project even though they have a whitepaper and a road-map but if they decided to left their project if they are going to hit the quota of ethereum being collected they do. So, therefore i can say that you may choose those who bringing or manage the whole bounty/signature campaign with high reputation manager already not by a newbie or a member who has negative trust mark on his profile.
Having a solid team i one of the factor to avoid scam ICO's project.

If any information on the site, whitepage...you found that lie, 100% that ICO is scam

Scam ICO will come up with improper development team and whitepaper so it is better to read out their whitepaper thoroughly then you will get clear idea about the project.The scam ICO will not be run buy a reputed manager of the forum because they will do complete research about the project before managing it.That's why there are lots of campaign ran by new members who are calling themselves as bounty manager.

I will search for the academic degree of the founding team, because we can judge whether the project is fraudulent or not.

YOU CAN SEE IT FROM THE WHITE PAPER , WHEN READING WHITE PAPER WE CAN SEE THIS PROJECT REALISTIC OR NOT. FROM TELEGRAM GROUP YOU CAN SHOOT QUESTIONS TO ADMINS THEN ALSO YOU CAN GET AN IDEA. DO NOT TRUST WEBSITE, SOME ARE MORE COLORFUL WEBSITES THERE BUT THE THING IS THEY ARE SCAM. YOU CAN GO ICODROPS THEY ARE PROVING SOME GOOD ICO'S. BUT DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH

There is not any way to identify scams , even in real world , you can not identify all the scams .

What I do to avoid losing money or wasting time HODLing some coins that wont grow (not necessary scam)

1) Avoid project from certain countries (ahem)
2) Browsing through my Facebook newsfeed, most of the time those scammy ICO will pop up as sponsored post. With headlines and beautiful graphic promising XXX% return within XX period, BONUS + 9999% during first day sales, backed by president of the moon, we are the first/here to break/here to revolutionize, yaadaa yaadaa all the beautiful promises that Ponzi/Scam MLM normally uses to attract sucka
3) Invest in ICO that already has running business (very limited, 99.999% of the ICO now are 'REVOLUTIONARY thing')
4) Read whitepaper, ask yourself question like, this is business model viable (or do they even have a business model to sustain their own business, which a lot of ICO can't answer you). Try asking, at what price, what business model, how they going to sustain their business, pay the salary and shiats, they can't answer you.
5) If it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true. Maybe things like 'revolutionary social media platform, we gonna overtake Facebook in 7mths after our launch of platform', we will get all their users to move to our platform, we gonna play tons of ads and earn from it and all profit goes to YOU, our dear investor.

The best ways in my opinion how to define a scam is to study a project, as well as to analyze their site and analyze the code on git. Also, if the project has an alpha version, it already says that the project is probably not a scam. But all these actions still will not give you a guarantee

To check legit ico check all there information. The website if it is very constructive,the community,people behind that project you can check there linkedin and also there social media community if it is active.

It is quite hard to identify scam project nowadays. Scammers become more and more experienced. They prepare all project really good. But, to try avoid make like all previous commenters said. Read carefully whitepaper and roadmap of project. Check licences where possible. Check team, try to find them in Linkeldin/Facebook, check history of CEO and other top managers, take a look when public profile was created. If you doubt, better not invest - trust yourself. Good luck with ICO´s  ;)

#1 best way to spot ICO scams is to look at their ratings & reviews on websites like
https://cryptorated.com (https://cryptorated.com)

Good luck!

The first thing I do when spotting a good ICOs is when their announcements and bounty campaigns are being managed by higher rank members of this forum because good ICOs are paying good money for their ICO to an experienced bounty campaign managers and good ICOs have good funding.

You can't always rely on their websites because anything can be copied from anywhere that's why we to check their integrity because good ICOs have good reputation, they could hire good and skilled developers, they could hire experienced bounty campaign managers, they have a very strong community in social media and or telegram.
Good ICOs can be found on Facebook advertising and in other popular social media.

Just some of the tips to detect scam:
- Anonymous or unknown developers;
- Whitepapers with unrealistic goals and "Oxford English professor" language;
- Unclear token usage

There are no rules that will tell you which ICO is a scam and which not. But there are some indicators for scam ICOS:
* Fake photos of team members (Tool: Google Reverse Image Search)
* Copied texts (Tool: Plagiarism Checker)

Until now a days still difficult to identify a scam ICO. 
But first time I always look track record of the team. 
Analyze their portofolio . Are thats accessable But you can see watch on ico rating if thats ico are tol risky or not.  Then you can made your own decision. 

https://icorating.com/     This is a good website where you can see the ROI and risk level of the upcoming ICO, so you can judge if the ICO is a fraud.

Yeah its hard to identify which ICO is true or scam yes there are ways to check the back ground of the the core development team,you should also check the functional product they are developing and lastly you should also read their white paper determine their road map if it is really feasible. the best thing also you also find them in social media to determine if this people really exist or their expertise are reallable.

Knowing the ICO that you wanted to invest in or participate to any bounty being offered is crucial before you handed your money, time, and effort to a scam ICO. Knowing first the TEAM behind this ICO is likely to be my first step, checking every member's profile on LinkeIn. A solid team means a greater chance for a legit and successful ICO. Next to that is their White Paper because some scam ICOs can be spotted through their shady/fishy WhitePaper. Other ICO is even more evident that it is a scam because of their copy-paste-from-somewhere content of their White Paper. Their Website will follow and the roadmap too if the project seems to be realistic at all.

Always check the whitepaper and roadmap before investing in any ico.

First, you should try to fing out if there is anythng wrong in the white paper. Then, you need to do some research on the history of the team members to see if they are trustful.

It's not easy really , some of many projects that people thought "will be next big thing" turned in to scams. There are some ways like many guys here suggested.
 
Some of tips highlighted -

1 - Read the whitepaper, their vision and the way it's written explains a lot.
2 - Team members, If they posted images and names of the members always check those. to be scam ICO's put random fake profiles from the internet, that would be a great sign to understand whether it's going to be a scam.
3 - Activity on the telegram , and social media groups. always stay alert with them, specially telegram. contact admins with Direct messages and ask questions.

but above all that, with all correct info, a grand vision , even with everything some ICO's go scam. That's inevitable.

If you're not sure about finding one, check for the trusted lists from "big names" in crypto field, they most of the time have a recommended list. In this GAME, it's as much as hard work, also a game of LUCK , sometimes you can have unbelievably awesome results following LUCKY people and engage in their recommended lists. Try that sometime, most of the times it works.

Its obvious but really hard to spot, you just need to do some homework before making a decision.. cause most of the ico out there are not related to blockchain or no product at all and their coin has no usage their are just bunch of scammer who are just riding on the bandwagon of blockchain technology..make a dyor first cause it will make you save a lot of time and money.

you need to check team, project, and roadmap. also look at how devs answer to technical questions and critics.

sometimes when it's a sophisticated scam, it's too late when you catch that.

Few commitments on github, big accent on community etc.

We must search about the project's developers or the team's bcakground. It is important to take note of their accomplishments and their achievements in the area of tneir project. Also, we must read the whitepaper if it is realistic and giving the demands of the society.

No devs photos, big promises and huge bonuses like 70% and more.

Investigate the team that is working on the project and validate your identity

you cant identify if you only look website and whitepaper. They are so easy to create. I think best way to find good ICO, is   searching its team and advisor. for example  sether has great team and it has John McAffee for advisor.

Any ICO asking and insisting for your personal information and identity does not deserve your fund! ICO is risky and asking for personal information in addition to risk you are already taking is absurd.

I believe checking the project on the rating site is the best plus the the background of their team. Also knowing the number of the community of the project is helpful.

Three ways to analyse an ICO.
1. Whitepaper : To read whitepaper is essential if you are going to invest in an ICO, it is the face of a coin, usually scams don't have well developed and prepared whitepaper.
2. Managing Team : Check the team background, check whether their track record and profiles exists in social media or any other platforms. Teams of scam ICOs will not have any previous record or profiles in other social circules or professional platforms like LinkedIn.
3. Affiliation, sponsors and partners : Usually ICOs have their affiliation with some other companies and also have some partners, to check those companies can also help to analyse the ICO.

Well, to distinguish the legit projects from the scams one has to put in a lot of effort in researching the projects. Its all about reading, reading and again, reading. We need to read everything that is out there about a project. If the ressources are very thin or there is not much to read about a project, its a bad indicator for me. If there is a lot and the overall impression is not good (content, typos, professionalism, carelessness) I keep away from the ICO. I would suggest that everyone should set some personal filters that he puts all ICO's through before investing money into them (Whitepaper, Idea, Need for blockchain?, team, advisors, partnerships, jurisdication of the project etc.).

Study carefully the team, who these people are, whether they are real names and contacts, as well as advisors, see if the project has already passed the pre-settlement how many funds were raised. Pay attention also to bonuses, if they are too big this should also alert. Read certainly more independent sources

It is hard to identify ICO scams. The best thing to do is research first the project you are to join. Then, check everything- its website, whitepaper and the roadmap. Then see its offered bonuses. Try to compute if its attainable.

You know, some ICO has a "no-name" team but it's going to the moon and some has a top-100 professionals and it's creeping on the bottom of the market. It's a good advice but it's not working at 100%. You also can just join their Telegram group or just read through the forum thread also.

Yeah, for me, I try to do the equivalent of a background check, on the company + founders, as much as I can find anyway.

Linkedin, past projects, CVs, anything to check reputability.

Scam ICOs can be easily identified over time.
Checking their website isn't always reliable because everything can be copied today even designs and everything.
I prefer to check their social media community like reddit, facebook and must of all their Telegram as their main discussion and communication platform.
Good ICOs have good social community, I believe when an ICO telegram has over 1k members then not a scam otherwise they are.

Any ICO that you can not verify it's token supply  is probable of fraud.  ICO that had no history of code development on github may not be legit.  They may only be looking for money just to run.  ICO must have a working experience of idea they are pitching.  It is even better if they have a working product or services.

It is difficult to find so first you need to check full campaign details and activities. Experience of the team workers.

learn the command so that all people are real. Look when the project was conceived, if the working model, which bonuses pre sell. Subscribe to the telegram channels with the analysis of projects.

If think if proper, thorough and sufficient research is being carried out it can be detected but there are some scam ICOs that will really look real despite any research, one just have to be very careful before joining any ICO.

I look at the project site, I read about what it is, I look at what team it exposes and maybe what projects they have already done before.

look out for these three things.
1. The Developers Are Anonymous or not
2. The Token does not have a clear use case or just normal idea bought from somewhere else
3. The Whitepaper Sets Unrealistic Goals  8)  8)

Agree to you buddy, I just also want to add the thing that I always do to see if a project is a scam or not.I make a visit in there social media and there telegram. You can easily know them there because there is no update and discussion about there project.

It is really difficult to determine which ico is scam and which is real. I just capitulate to answer the question correctly , but there are several ways but which you can identify
-identify the error in white paper
-the website and content quality
-check their team mate in linked in
-check their track record if any
-check their ranking in various ico benchmarking site.

Finding a good ICO means you have to first of all take a look at project's goals and the team.
The goals should be real and be demanded by the society. The Team should consist of professionals and consists of people with decent and clear background. Project's roadmap should provide the information about the development plans. If these rules are not followed then a project is usually a scam.

It the team is anonymous = BIG RED FLAG. If there is no whitepaper and there is no plan to come out soon with a Whitepaper = RED FLAG. If the team consists in one or two people only and they have no product yet = RED FLAG.

I have forgotten to mention that also the project have to make a sense - if you cannot understand what they are talking about, probably nobody else will either.

Which ICO has top 100 professionals that's creeping at the bottom of the market?

I think we should be smart in judging the project. You need a thorough analysis before determining the potential ICO or a scam. sometimes who have great promotions and marketing exactly that becomes a scam. doesnt always a passive in marketing that will be a scam. although the seriousness of running their project are participating in the assessment for their ICO potentiality. but there are more important things. ie see the history and background of their team (because it will determine the ICO picture is trusted or not) there is also a clear roadmap and so on.. most importantly do in-depth analysis dude

maybe is hard to find identify ICO is scam or not. because they all promising, but i think you need look up them white paper and more research about ICO like googling they ICO asking people who already join maybe thats all.

From a different perspective, since many great guys are giving great idea.

When I look for ICOs, to define whether they are scam or not, I look at the bounty manager.
Nowadays most bounty managers are Senior/ Hero or Legendary.
However, even they are in that ranking some of them are doing shit jobs.

So, when you find the bounty or ANN thread, look at the name of the manager.
If the manager's name is Sylon, Aerys2, or deadly, they are well experienced
bounty manager, so I think they must have done a due diligence by themselves.

That is one way I decide which ICO to join.

A sign if the ICO is a scam is that tokens developers are anonymous or otherwise unknown. While it is true that the creator of Bitcoin - a pseudonymous individual or group running under the name Satoshi Nakamoto - does not reveal his true identity, he does this because he created a network that does not depend on the reliability of a central authority.

First and foremost take a critical look at what the project seeks to solve.Read the technical sections of the white paper and join their telegram group and ask them a question with relation to what they stated.How influential and experience are the team with regards to the project and finally check opinions from other ICO other investors you trust can do good analysis on projects.

in my opinion determining the scam project is to browse the developer. Avoid promising great advantages to us. Check the social media it has, whether the post is always new, and its members are often active. Avoid projects run by new people as project managers. Use telegram, join their telegram. Telegram will provide quick information about the project being followed.

I agree 100% with 1.

This is pretty much on point. Even if you see some pictures of devs sometimes those people don't exist or they're stock photos of random people pulled from various websites.

Someone above said "join their telegram" but that's actually beginning to be where many scams actually take place these days.

I say look at maybe Linked In connections, see what other contact details are out there. Look at the start of the project, the questions answered, see if they've attended any live events, see the attendees to said event etc.

Also suggest facebook and twitter accounts to make connections. Also what are they offering and why are they doing an ICO?

make sure the legal document is publicly accessible and the data is valid
make sure the team and developers have a public profile, such as LinkedIn,
note the total suply, project type, project area coverage makes sense
be sure to use Smart Contract or Escrow in fundraising

Best way to identify if the ICO is scam is to read their whitepaper. You can easily determine because it is obvious that they are setting some kind of weird goals. And base on my experience,some scam ICOs only get their pictures of their developers in the internet. They randomly pick some pictures of businessmen and women. When you search for the name of the developer,you'll find out they don't exist. Another thing is,they dont reveal the contacts of the proponents, they're hiding it from the public so that no one can contact it because obviously,it is fake.

Study carefully the team, who these people are, whether they are real names and contacts, as well as advisors, see if the project has already passed the pre-settlement how many funds were raised. Pay attention also to bonuses, if they are too big this should also alert. Read certainly more independent sources

you need to read the whitepaper and understand it first. See whether their concept is important and realistic. Check about their dev team. Are they real? Join social media channels and ask questions and see reviews. Ask from experts in investing.

First is to check if the fundamental of the coins you are looking at, I mean on that way you can easy identify if the ICO really means business or to be direct i am pertaining to it's feasibility in the market. Second is to check the background of the team. Are they new on the business, check their reputation and do your research about them. Are they involve in previous scams?, and after that if you really validate them, check the project itself the mechanics the whitepaper and the roadmap itself will help you determine if it's a scam or not. By this way you can figure out what will be the possible future of an ICO.

This is why i am skeptical with investing in ICO's I've heard that some can be a scam, but on the other hand i've also seen others do very well.

read white paper, their team, concept and their directions.

In assessing the ICO need to ask the question: is it really necessary startup blockchain and its own token? If in both cases the answer is "no", it is likely that the project — just empty and in fact does not perform any useful function.

All about ICO will be clarified in white papers, official websites, social media, and discussion forums. and dev immediately responds to questions clearly, and is consistent in answering and easily understood is a sign that the ICO is really honest. if one of these, chances are the ICO is a scam

I've been scammed many times and I still find very difficult to identify if the bounty is scam. The things I always put on my mind now when finding bounty is I will not based on promised bonus and I find trusted campaign manager.

it's very difficult to know a project if it's a scam but if they offer you more than you can earn it it is because that's the way scams are now tempted if you are too big in a project, preferably moderate your income is more than a scam.

Now it's quite difficult to identify scam, because people have learned to very seriously hide themselves and their projects, so perhaps this is simply impossible, unless of course paying attention to any little things, people still get smart on their mistakes.

now it is most likely not possible, if personally not familiar with the organizers ... 90 percent of fraud ... just collecting money. if earlier it was possible to create funds to help sick children or save the dying Bengal tigers .... now a new trend, to come up with an unknown company to collect money for it and disappear)

Certain scam schemes related to ICO campaigns might use a duplication methodics.
A real case emerged. :)

Agrotechfarm ATF cannabis project is a classical scam( agrotechfarm.com)
Here is a typical example.

1. Hustlers  detect one of ongoing innovative projects (FIBONACCI.FARM) manufacturing home agro appliances for strawberry cultivation.
2. The scam artists pretending distributors/cutomers purchased several FIBONACCI appliances. Bingo, now they have real appliances presenting as they own technologies.
3. All content is illegaly taken from the corporate fibonacci.farm site. A classical copyright infringement case.
5. Then they create own ICO site (Agrotechfarm.com) presenting themselves as experienced agronomists who composed a unique agro solution for cannabis growing.
6. ATF official ICO-pre sale launched , transactions made and finally they are grabbing investors funds. Marks are robbed, funds are sent to offshore bank account located in Cyprus.
7. Desperate Hustlers are searching for the next attractive start-up to repeat a scam scheme again.
8. Again
9. And again.....

It's not so easy to identify a scam project, but I guess you should not be tempted by big bonuses. The first thing i watch is always the team, their experience, results etc. Also you can search different analyzes of this project. It`s great if a project is added to different sites about ICOs and have been rated by experts. Also pay attention to its popularity. A project can be fine but if no one cares about it, then it will be much harder for this project to achieve great results.

Actually everybody he cant identify a scam project because ones I've been scam you can't identify totally if this project are scam or not,maybe you can try search who is the campaign manager and also I can check this campaign if legit or not.

Never give any value to an ICO based on it's concept or because of the nice face of it on the website. The Best thing is have a Research on the profiles of whole ICO Team. Their history is highly important. Than have a look what ICO Rating sites are thinking about the ICO. What are the opinions of the community is also highly important. Never be shy to ask the questions from the Team.