Topic: Small Guide - How to detect a website scam (Read 284 times)

The following is a and old post of mine, but it serves it's purpose to show how these tools may be used. The tools themselves help to find sites with a matching image, similar or identical to the one you provide the tool to search for.


The above case was extracted from a site where people were providing false testimonials and opinions on a given mining site. The woman in the picture, allegedly called Charlotte Cox on her profile, turns out to be quite a few other people as per the above quote. That is one of the easy red flags to bear in mind.

There are a lot of steps to take if you want to recognize a scam project but the information provided by the project owner is what will trigger the step you needed to follow to be sure if the project or team are genuine.

No, the site provided by the above user is used to check images online because some scammers make use of models or bought some pictures on Shutterstock, so the duty of the site provide use the result of the image you search on their portal.

This is, unfortunately, impossible to know.
Because criminals use photos of models or good people, which they pick up over the internet. Therefore, one of them will be true and not a fraud. In addition, nowadays it is already possible to get faces from people, made by AI. Which don't appear anywhere, if not on that fraudulent website.

Therefore, it is up to each of us to be attentive to various details and to try to understand if, in the set of information available, it is coherent and makes sense.

Most criminals miss some detail that the most attentive will be able to identify and suspect the situation. But unfortunately a good number of them assemble everything very well which makes it all more difficult.

In fact, it is often seen that many companies serve pictures of their team members in such a beautiful way and provide links on social media but later it is seen that when their ICO / IDO is over, they cannot be found.  What is the way to recognize them?  And will the website you provide understand that all those people are doing scams?

You can use some websites and their tools to check photos and find fake ones.

• http://www.reverse-image-search.org
• https://www.duplichecker.com/reverse-image-search.php
• https://www.tineye.com
• https://www.everypixel.com/
• https://reverse.photos/
• http://imgops.com
• http://www.pictriev.com
• https://pimeyes.com/en/
• https://pipl.com

Look, there are still many who ask for credit cards, as this can steal data and use them for other purchases.
For example, they use this data to make cloned cards and in turn rent cars to steal, buy illegal products, etc.

A site, which only has a credit card payment method, is always strange to me. Of course, not all are schemes, and new or smaller projects, it is good to have several payment methods available, such as PayPal.

Today there are higher levels of security for credit cards, but there are still a lot of credit card fraud.

I mean the reason they've resorted to such low level of scamming is because they haven't got the required intellect to actually earn the money legitimately. Maybe, they would have benefited from the IQ test of the forum .

Although, in all seriousness sometimes the scammers aren't particularly looking for you to purchase something from them, and keep that money, but get your credit card credentials. If they that, they could theoretically make purchases in your name. Hence, why credit card fraud is rather popular among these types of people.

One additional problem is that you can't link even a  legit certificate to the website.
For example, I could start a website called Rika Mining and show this certificate:
RIKA LIMITED
Incorporated in 1994, I would assume it's a legit business.
Same for Stomp LTD, 2003.

Real scammers, the lowest of the low just search for keywords on that index, 2,372 matches found for "mining" alone, 133,959 matches found for investment. Pick one and claim it's yours.  

I've seen a lot of scam sites that accept credit cards. That just shows that scammers are often not any smarter than the people they manage to scam.

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I would add one more red flag that is especially popular among ponzies and that is certificate of incorporation. While in reality it doesn't prove anything even if the data from certificate displayed on the website matches the data found on Companies House, scammers like to use it because it does appear legit to those that are not familiar how this certificate really works.

Problem with the certificate is that the issuer doesn't check whether the info you submit to get one is correct or not; you just pay 15 GBP and they issue you what is essentially a worthless piece of paper. And that's another reason why so many scams have UK address listed. I wrote about it some time ago so those who are not sure how that looks like can check it out. That basically became a rule of thumb for me so when I see that someone is boasting with that, I look no further for other signs of scam.

Good point. This was what I was talking about before, if you do a reverse image search on those images, they'll likely always be some kind of stock image. The give away is they're usually very professional looking, when the reviewiers probably haven't got perfect lighting etc.

Yeah, every minute is probably excessive. Although, these are quite popular plugins so it doesn't always mean they aren't legit if they've got some sort of notification plugin. Although, I'll be honest its an invasion of privacy for me, X has bought from Y, those types of notifications should be frowned upon.

There are a few more red flags on these websites, I'm mostly interested in mining resellers so they only fit these but still:

- the reviews, serious websites don't list customer reviews, not with pictures and names anyhow how do you even get the picture of your customer in the first place)
- pop-up notification about x from y country buying z amount of stuff every minute
- numbers that don't really match the age of the website, millions of investors' money in one week
- full CV of the people running this business with a ton of info about their experience but at the same time you can't find any of this info anywhere else, eight can you get a second pic of them
- 1-minute youtube videos that tell you how great this company is with the same persons that are doing tons of those. with an obviously fake logo in the background, I know one guy that has made 6 (that I know of) for scammers selling gear
- obviously edited videos with their brand on cars or trucks on buildings, pretty easy to spot once you get the hang of it
- city center address for a business that resells mining gear, what's the point? Paying 10k in monthly rent for what?
- weird data about the company, 4-5 old registered company but with no activity prior to this, no relation whatsoever to the current website


No real scammer with a brain will ever accept credit cards, you have enough time to make a chargeback and I'm really curious about the :
what do you mean by this?

The clear sign it's a scam site is when the only payment accepted are cryptocurrencies, that's when you should start asking yourself questions.

With time the hacking styles or say scammers have become advanced by opting for the the latest technical updations in their way to scam users out of their funds.The points you have mentioned are well good like the website structure or the team behind the project then it's all can be really good build up to attract more customers but diving into the core aspects will help you to recognise the legit projects.

The developer they hire have nothing to do with how the project is going to work if they are getting paid well and not on the team so you know there are many CSS crash course which will help you to optimise the site in good way.Even if they are spending say $1000 they have plans to scam 10x or more from people.So be sure to check all the details at minor level also before investing your funds or say if you are newbie then avoid them.


Same scammer pretending to be on different platforms with unique usernames in order to fool more number of people can be detected with this but if they are using similar attire to carry them.But it can still be verified through Google images if they are using this method:

An excellent tip! If the name appears on several different sites, on subjects that have nothing to do with each other, and with other contradictory information, it is clear that it is a generic name.

Some of the crypto site that people come to the forum with, allegedly stating that they’ve been scammed on, are clones or near clones to other sites. Besides the logical factors that are all red flags (dazzling ROIs, sloppy site finishes, missing links or links that point to other domains, fake photographs ⁽¹⁾, etc.), it’s often easy to detect these families of clones by selecting parts of the page’s text and/or TOS, and simply googling it between quotation marks.

⁽¹⁾ Using Google Images is a good way to find that Mark Smith is also Brian Coleman, but also Will Brown, John Brandel, Philip Johen or whatever other name they’ve used.

It's an interesting tip, and it's one more help to try to understand better what's going on.

But, even when I use Bootstrap templates, I don't always change the author information. I don't feel that need, even though it's a legitimate project. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that just because the names do not match, the project is not valid.

Let me help you by adding one more tip.

Most of the scam websites are just templates built in Bootstrap.
Go to website's homepage, press CTRL+U as it will open the page source in HTML in new tab.

In that, find .css or .js file.
If they have attributes of a different author than the team member of the project, it's surely a free template website which is more likely to be a scam.

It is true that many times the age of the domain does not mean anything to determine whether a project is reliable or not.

But this information can be useful for cases of companies/projects that are already a few years old. For example, imagine that you want to buy Nike shoes, the Nike domain must have been registered for several years, already a scam site, imitating the original site, the domain will be much more recent.

Basically, it can be a tool that can help in cases where the person finds the site strange.

Yeah, I'm also conflicted while I do appreciate websites which have gone into the effort to look nice, I'm kind of a sucker for plain HTML sometimes. For example, resumes. Also, I prefer functionality over beauty, if they're providing a good service I could care less about how it looks. Its a bit like how fancy restaurants dress up your food, but all I want to do is have nice food.

I think the rest of your points are decent. The thing is Bitcoin is a little more riskier to use than fiat, not because there's more scammers, but because you are responsible for your Bitcoin, and there's no way of getting that back once its been broadcast, and confirmed via the network. Unlike Paypal, and other fiat payment processors, which do allow chargebacks. Although, this doesn't mean that not allowing that is a bad thing, that's one of the better features of Bitcoin in my opinion.

Yeah, domains change hands constantly. I've never really understand why domain age contributes to measuring trust on certain domain valuing sites. Anything that hasn't just been created should be alright, you don't need a twenty year domain. Besides, new websites aren't automatically a scam.

That's true. Appear is less and less bleached, because it also has increasingly affordable costs.

Perhaps what is still lacking is the desire in the texts and information presented. Often the information ends up not making sense, but to understand this it is necessary to be very attentive and search the site deeper.

The important thing is that we are always very attentive to various details on the sites we visit. And if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

unfortunately, both scammers and their ways are evolving, just like a real business. sometimes basic parameters are not sufficient.
In most cases, a little more experienced eye can recognize the scam already on the first impression of the site. but there are things that don't have to be a sure parameter that it's a scam. For example, whois privacy is now free on almost all domain registrars, it is enough to check options through registration. It can't be considered a valid point.

I saw a lot of very well designed and coded scam websites, there are also plenty of very skilled designers who will make a solid looking site for $40-$50. without design errors with colours.
Domain age is also can't be fully trusted, there is a market of aged and expired domains. So it's possible to buy an aged (5+ years) domain for $100. this can create the illusion of years of consistency if someone follows that parameter.