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This is a general question to replace specific site reviews

I am interested in a site X, but I am unsure whether it is a scam or can be trusted. What are some approaches, guidelines, and things to look for on an unfamiliar site to try and work out whether I should trust it?

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    It might be helpful to define what you think a "scam" is? For example, some people may think Coinbase.com is a "scam" because they control the private keys and take away financial sovereignty from their users. This question may be too broad to get any great answers.
    – Eric Allam
    Nov 9 '17 at 8:02
  • Would be nice to have a range of answers which cover different aspects, perhaps a start on "scam" would be something fraudulent/would steal their money. Feel free to edit it and narrow it down :)
    – MeshCollider ♦
    Nov 9 '17 at 8:09
  • It's very hard to define what a "scam" is, besides some very obvious cases which you can probably tell already at the first sight. Some site might be totally normally operating for a very long period of time but one day could not continue and shut down. For example Mt. Gox: No matter what happened, many early users who withdrew their funds completely probably didn't get affected at all. Did many later users get affected a lot? Probably yes. Was Mt. Gox intended to be a "scam" from the beginning? How would you answer that question?
    – xji
    Nov 15 '17 at 22:34
  • Some exchanges invest their clients' money on other investments, but if they're lucky no client may never lose money. Are they "scams"? It seems that there is really a question of trust and degree of security measures/long-term sustainability that an exchange has taken. There's probably no easy, uniform answer to that. Of course there might be sites that were created to purely "scam" people in the first place. But they should be relatively easy to tell by way of online reviews and some research.
    – xji
    Nov 15 '17 at 22:34

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