[How to] Detect and recognize projects

[Leviathan.007]

Here in this the article I'm going to explain about how do I detect and recognize scam projects in crypto market. However, the method they use is usually same, unless a few projects with more creativity.
Let's say by rising the value of the crypto currencies specially back in 2017, many fraudsters started to trap victims and mostly newbies. From beautiful shiny but fake ICO to tempting profits in short-term.

Domain Name
These websites will try to trick into thinking they are official websites of well-known brands (Facebook, Adidas, etc...). While, they have not any relation to the actual company. Also, make sure that the domain name is as it was expected, especially if you are clicking a on link. For example, when you are expecting to enter coinbase.com, you may they redirected into colnbase.com, with exactly the same skin. The only difference is colnbase.com will collect your username/password and for the abusers (Phishing method)

Apparently Flawless and Excellent
This usually happens when you are searching for good online in low prices. For example, when you are going to buy iPhone 11 for $300. 'No discount is unreasonable'. They will try to collect your payment information and maybe you will not even receive any goods at all. Also, I saw this method when a website was trying to sell Bitcoins for $3999 while the real price was more than $5000. If you need any huge and unreasonable discount you will need to double check everything and make sure. Also, the other example for being apparently excellent and tempting is to promising huge profits, try to understand and make sure about how they should provide you the profit.



Check the Documents (even if it's hard to read)
Some exchanges/casinos will put some conditions for the service. For example, you will need to do KYC before the withdraw the they maybe ban your country, or they maybe have a rule about using VPNs. Usually the list of user agreement is super huge with small font but if you re spending you money you need to read the agreement. 'Do not sign anything without reading' by registering the account you are actually signing the user agreement. Also, the other important document is the whitepaper, always read the whitepaper before you even think about investing. However, whitepaper can't guarantee anything because there are some writers doing the whitepapers for some money.

Trustmark
Trustmarks are a method for third-party verification for an online legit business. These licenses are usually for centralized business, if you see crypto related website with governmental trustmarks double check the license. For example, the license was published for 'Henry Investments', now the scammers can create a fake company with this name and abuse the trustmark, or they can easily change the name using Photoshop.

Check the Domain
Using the websites like https://who.is you can check the domain information about the website, domains registered for short periods of time are suspicious domains. Because the scammers will usually run the website for short periods of time with small amount of money.
Also, check the other websites registered on the server, usually the buy one server and run multiple scam websites on it.



Reviews
Never ever trust the comments and reviews on social media and trustrating websites. Many project will pay some small money to people in order to send some positive reviews for them, they even give them some payment proof screenshots to broadcast in public.

Team Members
This is a a very known method when scammers take some photo from random people from social media and put in their website. A simple image search can be useful here.

Thank you for your attention.

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[lovesmayfamilis]

I probably won't surprise you by saying that the above methods of checking scam sites are not the only ways. Today scammers have learned to work very professionally by promoting their dirty ideas. If you look at the topic of Scam Accusations on this forum, especially in 2018-2019, the resourcefulness of the scammers has broken records. I remember that there were projects that hired real actors, rented premises to fully correspond to the invented project.

I also came to the forum as a naive newbie who believes in every ICO project. Later, I came across a post by Coolcryptovator, for which I am sincerely grateful to him
This was the motivation to start understanding the fairness of different projects.
OP, I think that would be a good addition to yours.

🌍 Guidelines, how to spot a scam ICO & report effectively. ✔

🌍[Guide] Prevent scam!!! Some useful tools for find scam / fake ICO team 🌍

[Leviathan.007]

I probably won't surprise you by saying that the above methods of checking scam sites are not the only ways. Today scammers have learned to work very professionally by promoting their dirty ideas. If you look at the topic of Scam Accusations on this forum, especially in 2018-2019, the resourcefulness of the scammers has broken records. I remember that there were projects that hired real actors, rented premises to fully correspond to the invented project.

I also came to the forum as a naive newbie who believes in every ICO project. Later, I came across a post by Coolcryptovator, for which I am sincerely grateful to him
This was the motivation to start understanding the fairness of different projects.
OP, I think that would be a good addition to yours.

🌍 Guidelines, how to spot a scam ICO & report effectively. ✔

🌍[Guide] Prevent scam!!! Some useful tools for find scam / fake ICO team 🌍

Yes, @lovesmayfamilis. I already saw the threads you linked and a few other threads.
The point of this article is to show my point of view through these project, The other people maybe have some other factors to recognize such projects and sometimes same as me. By creating this thread and exposing some scams, I just hope to make the people learn about how usually scam project acts. Because a few years ago when I started working on crypto, I was a victim of a ponzi scheme project myself. Thanks for the comment mate.

[Rikafip]

I would just like to ad that even if all those things that OP mentioned checks out (team is legit, no plagiarism, website is functional and decent etc) before investing either time (bounty hunter) or money into project, ask yourself does it make any sense, does it bring anything new and does it need blockchain at all. 99% of the time answer to those simple questions will be no.

[BITCOIN4X]

Nice list and there are still more because this scammers are always improvising daily. Some scammers promote their website on Google and whenever you search for a website name, their own website will be the one at the top of the search result making you think it's legit.

Phishing site on Google are sometime too vague to recognize if we are not careful. Apart from a lack of knowledge, entering a website too quickly without ensuring the authenticity of the site often result in people getting scammed. The safest way so far that I have done is to save site that we often visit in bookmark including exchange, forum and so on. In this way I think we can improve security rather than fraudulent attempt that are too often found on google.

[Lordhermes]

Nice list and there are still more because this scammers are always improvising daily. Some scammers promote their website on Google and whenever you search for a website name, their own website will be the one at the top of the search result making you think it's legit.

In addition, these so called scammers are now paying for Google Play Store for app ratings, making them legit and somewhat trustable. This is something to be careful of that's why users are strictly advice to go download app from the project website. It's just a simple solution to avoid been scammed and victim.

[Upgrade00]

Relying on Google for all your search answers is not a good idea, as some of their results are misleading and could potentially lead to a scam website. Rather, aggregate the result on different search engines such as; duckduckgo, bing, etc and compare them.

ask yourself does it make any sense, does it bring anything new and does it need blockchain at all. 99% of the time answer to those simple questions will be no.

These are simple yet vital questions to answer before investing in a project. Most projects are copied rehashed ideas and the blockchain is usually added to make it more appealing and to key into the hype.
The small percent which checks out could however still turn out to be a scam due to the greed or ineptitude of the devs and founders.

[masulum]

Relying on Google for all your search answers is not a good idea, as some of their results are misleading and could potentially lead to a scam website. Rather, aggregate the result on different search engines such as; duckduckgo, bing, etc and compare them.

Whatever search engine used by user, it will not a good idea if user not re-check their domain and reviews. Few years ago i'm trying to use duckduckgo to search about bitcointalk and ledger sites for my mini research. What i find from that, the results in number one i got is bitcointalk[dot]to and fake ledger website. Comparing search results will not effective if user still believe in something untrusted. But, if we want to compare we can use different keywords, this will help us to play in search engine algorithm. Stay away from project review site, and we can try to search in forum discussion trough search engine, example site:bitcointalk.org project name discussion or something else.

[tbct_mt2]

There are many topics on this, so let's go to bookmark them and use them later when you need to investigate new projects Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects

OP, your topic is integrated too and thank you.

Your guide is too general and in my collection there are some great guides on how to detect fake images for example. If readers need to find more detailed guides, my collection can help them.

[Insanerman]

However, whitepaper can't guarantee anything because there are some writers doing the whitepapers for some money.

This is indeed a fact. I remember joining a signature campaign back then (bounty project) and worked so hard to promote it as it had a nice telegram community and a promising project (wearable crypto-supported watch wallet), and it haven't plagiarized it's whitepaper (I've investigated it) yet in the end for I think 2 months of the campaign, it turned to be a scam saying that they are processing the payments but they didn't. They even kicked everyone out on the telegram and could not be reached at all. Glad I never invested on such projects but I also think that what if other newbies in here did, hence I found this kind of thread very helpful. Though this must also be on the Reputation section, I think this fits here as a tutorial, a warning, and a reminder.

[cryptoaddictchie]

There are many topics on this, so let's go to bookmark them and use them later when you need to investigate new projects Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects

I like your collection/compilation as Ive always read some of those guide listed there. Its really helpful cause Ive always checking out some new ICO/IEO with campaign and reviewing their project thoroughly.

Though this must also be on the Reputation section, I think this fits here as a tutorial, a warning, and a reminder.

Topic like this although pointed in general should be here on B&H as a guide for newbies.

OP, Id like to suggest the technology and use case involved can be a good indication of recognizing a good project.. There are some projects that have a really great innovative platform but doesn't have any team info or activity on social media.

[The Cryptovator]

It's more difficult to detect recognized projects than detect a scam project. There are some potential symptoms to detect probably scam projects. But detect recognize project isn't possible anyway, because what we have seen previously that, many projects with legit team and documents skip with investors funds. Perhaps we may find some recognize IEO projects on the reputed exchange, but for ICO it's almost a dream. We don't know really what is around the team's mind, they will exit or they will develop what they had promised. I am hopeless about the ICO industry and I don't know the IEO trend will last how long. Because few worst exchanges involved with the 'so-called IEO' scam.

[masulum]

Because few worst exchanges involved with the 'so-called IEO' scam.

Mostly happen with new known exchange. If user want to be safe from IEO scam, the research they do must be included the exchange. Let see about IEO on Latoken, IEO project there mostly died. New project now do their IEO on Probit and another new known exchange. If they just seeing probit, i'm sure they will be trapped in another scam project easyly

[LbtalkL]

Team Members
This is a a very known method when scammers take some photo from random people from social media and put in their website. A simple image search can be useful here.

There are some time that finding about the photo if real or not does not help. I hope what happens on 2017 will not repeat, some scammers CEO are not scared to show their faces on social media or even blockchain conferences personally, and some did even get a selfie with well-known crypto individuals and use it to promote their scam projects. My point is, the photo listed on their website is real but they have hidden motives, I never heard one of them go to jail. But finding the photo if real or not will surely minimize any possible financial damages.

[sujonali1819]

well explained. Informative for who don't know. btw I am agreed with coolcryptovator, It's very hard to find recognize project nowadays. Actually the crypto market is now full of scam projects and we can not a legit from them. sometimes it comes but fortunately. Personally I don't like ICO project at this moment but sometime we can guess positive if any project launched with own fund and do marketing with real money not by ico token. And for IEO I only think positive for binance and bittrex ieos.

[ScamViruS]

It is not easy to know whether a project is a scam or not. Do some research to find out if the team in this project is real, and if they have any kind of palgiarism. But I don't think that's enough. Because those of us who have been involved with crypto since the ico hype of 2017, have seen how ico owners have run away with investors' money. Not all of them were fake teams.

So finding out in this way will not be of much use. I saw a lot of projects show their team something huge and created hype in the market. As a result, they left with investors' funds. Because it depends on the people behind the project whether the project will be in the market after ico or not.

[Nellayar]

A lot of guidelines have been shared in this forum. Unfortunately, scammers are also upgrading their strategies in order to fool people. In fact, we can`t easily differentiate the genuine projects from a fake one. It should undergo into a deep research for us to know how a project really serious.

I don`t know how we can eradicate this problem in crypto space. But I think educating our own selves is enough to avoid scam projects. Besides, learning from the past is enough already to lessen people who easily bait by flowering words of fake projects.

[BrewMaster]

A lot of guidelines have been shared in this forum. Unfortunately, scammers are also upgrading their strategies in order to fool people. In fact, we can`t easily differentiate the genuine projects from a fake one. It should undergo into a deep research for us to know how a project really serious.

are they really upgrading their scammy methods too?
i honestly haven't seen any new method of scamming people for a very long time. it has been the same thing but it gets easier and they keep changing the name of it. for example they were scamming using ICOs and then changed the name to IEO and did the same scam all over again under the new name then changed it a couple of times. and nowadays with the latest name (DeFi) they are scamming all the same.

[hatshepsut93]

There are some time that finding about the photo if real or not does not help. I hope what happens on 2017 will not repeat, some scammers CEO are not scared to show their faces on social media or even blockchain conferences personally, and some did even get a selfie with well-known crypto individuals and use it to promote their scam projects. My point is, the photo listed on their website is real but they have hidden motives, I never heard one of them go to jail. But finding the photo if real or not will surely minimize any possible financial damages.

This is because many of the "projects" are pulling soft-scams - they don't disappear with users funds and keep imitating development activity for years, so that no one can say that they don't do anything. They even might release some half-assed version of their promised product. But in the end of the day, they are putting investors money in their own pockets with no intention of delivering on their promises. So, it takes much more than checking teams to successfully avoid scams.

[tvplus006]

A lot of guidelines have been shared in this forum. Unfortunately, scammers are also upgrading their strategies in order to fool people. In fact, we can`t easily differentiate the genuine projects from a fake one. It should undergo into a deep research for us to know how a project really serious.

are they really upgrading their scammy methods too?
i honestly haven't seen any new method of scamming people for a very long time. it has been the same thing but it gets easier and they keep changing the name of it. for example they were scamming using ICOs and then changed the name to IEO and did the same scam all over again under the new name then changed it a couple of times. and nowadays with the latest name (DeFi) they are scamming all the same.

Yes, nothing new, scammers are coming up with. They use the same schemes that have been used thousands of times before. They do not need to invent anything, because there are all new "investors" who believe that it is so easy to earn money in the cryptocurrency market. In addition, scammers are lazy and they can't create a scam like PlusToken.