I wanted to play around with some altcoins but many of the main websites are sketch at best. For example when checking out UltraCoin, their recommended miner has spyware in it. What altcoins can you trust?
"Trust cannot be learned, purchased, or acquired-- it can only be earned." -Anonymous
Earning takes time, so asking others for recommendations is probably a bad starting point. Maybe figure out what's most important to you in a coin and then work out which coins have best implemented those features and have the most trust worthy community and devs.
Good feedback. It is hard to find the best place to start. As people state set up a VM, download the wallet, use monitoring tools and keep an eye out. See if others are talking about the coin, see social media and BCT and other crypto websites read up but remember just because a thousand people are raving about a coin doesn't mean its trustworthy.