As promised in my first post, here are a few tips to avoid scams on the Internet.
You start by asking yourself a few questions, as follows...
1) Who introduced you or how did you end up on the opportunity?
If a trusted person you know introduced you, ask them to show you evidence of the opportunity working for them.
If you don't know the person, but can contact them, ask them to show you evidence of the opportunity working for them.
If you don't know the person, and can't contact them, take caution, research the opportunity as much as you can. Generally, decent opportunities and scams will have some info available to give you some indication of how the opportunity is progressing.
2) Can you contact support, and how?
If there is some form of 'contact' available on the opportunity click on it, and see where it goes. It will generally be live chat, a form you fill in, an email address, or a link to a social site like Discord or Telegram.
If it's live chat, a form or email address, try making contact and see if they reply. Decent opportunities will generally respond within 24 hours or the live chat could actually be live. When contacting, just ask something simple like 'I'm interested in this opportunity, but don't know what to do, can you point me in the right direction, thanks' and you should find you get a positive and helpful response.
If the support is ONLY available via social sites, take caution, a lot of scams are operated via such platforms and the fact that they only have that one type of support raises suspicions.
3) Can you confirm payments they said have been paid, actually have been paid?
As an example, on cryptocurrency opportunities they often have a payments proof section or page, and put the transaction id by the payments. When clicking the transaction id, check where you end up, if you don't know the 'explorer' you're on, enter the transaction id on an explorer you know and trust (e.g. official ones) and see if everything matches or not. If it does, all good, it's a genuine payment, if it doesn't they're probably faking payments to entice you to make deposits. Personally, I would totally avoid any opportunity I thought were faking payment completely, and wouldn't even consider depositing.
4) Are the supposed payments realistic?
Some opportunities promise amazing returns, an example being Bitcoin doubling in 24 hours. Let's face it THEY could actually double the value of Bitcoin in 24 hours, the whole world would know about it, that news would spread fast... and I haven't heard that news since Bitcoin has existed.
5) Are there any reviews available?
Some opportunities actually ask members to post positive reviews in exchange for some form of reward, most of the time the rewards are credited, but when it comes to cashout time, the payment doesn't arrive at it's destination. This common practice is generally counteracted by some bad reviews that state the reality of the situation.
6) How long has the opportunity been available?
If it's less than 4 months, be very careful. Many scammers purchase trails of website hosting, run their scam throughout the trail, but don't renew the hosting and the website simply disappears, along with everyone's money!
However...
Every new opportunity has a start date, and not every new opportunity is a scam, so be careful not to write off an opportunity too soon. Using some of the questions above can provide you with some information to help you decide, there is also the possibility that a trusted opportunity provider has started a new opportunity, if so that news will be available within a few days.
And remember...
Even some long running and highly trusted opportunities have turned into scams, so it's possible that you will be shocked now and again!
