There are multiple crypto currency cloud mining scams happening around. People are willing to take your hard earned money with a prospect of you earning a lot of money in a short period of time. Such programs are also called High Yield Investment Programs (HYIP).
Thus, when I am going to review a particular cloud mining site, here is the rationale I'm going to put behind it. (Remember, the more ticks or approvals on the following criteria a company has, the better and more reliable it is):-
Photos of Mining Site
This is one of the most important criteria for a cloud mining site to be real. If they are actually mining cryptocurrency, they must have hardware which is doing so. If they actually do have the hardware, what is the problem showing it to people.
Thus, if there are no photos of the actual mining site, the company/website has high probability of being a fake/scam. So beware !Name and social profiles of people running the company
Every site almost has an about company page. There, they also mention about the team running the company. So, it's great if we can actually see profiles of those people.
WARNING: sometimes, sites employ stock photos, which are used to defraud people into believing that actual people run the company. So, it's always a good idea to check once on Google.Price of contracts
You have to realise that the cloud mining companies are also there to earn a profit. That's why they're going to price their contracts accordingly. You must get alarmed when you see very cheap contract prices compared to other companies. That is also one indication that scam websites use. They price their contracts really low so people invest and then they just run away with the money.Reinvestment feature
The reinvest feature basically allows you to reinvest whatever balance you have accumulated into buying more mining power. Although this is a good feature to have, many scam websites use this to take whatever balance a person has earned and keep it for themselves.
To spot a scam: A new website or company should not have this feature. But, it is a good feature for an established company.Withdrawal limit
All cloud mining companies have a limit or set criteria as to how much and when you can withdraw your earned balance. They do this because they cannot allow really small withdrawal (they basically batch withdrawals). Thus, scammy sites allow really small withdrawal to draw in new people.Free mining power
This is the number 1 feature to identify a cloud mining scam. It is impossible for any mining company to provide you with free mining power. That's like Nike giving away free shoes to you. You have to realise, why would they ! So it's directly a scam if they're offering free mining power.Two factor authentication
This is a security feature to add. This feature might be missing if it is a new company (and potentially a scam).Referral system
Generally a lot of online websites selling something have a referral system. This is done to entice people to bring in customers. There is nothing wrong with it.
The pattern for genuine mining sites is that they offer straight up one time bonus.
What scam websites do is that they have a 2 or 3 tier referral system - something like X%+Y%+Z% . This is again done to entice more people to give them money !
Conclusion
So this was a small list of all the things that one should look at before deciding to invest into a cloud mining website. This is by no means exhaustive and is always a work in progress !
Check out my blog - https://cryptocashflow.blogspot.in where I'll continuously review different services !