Except being closed-sources, do you have some examples of "red flags" I can spot easily? Do you have some clues to be sure that a service is probably not good?
I'm not a coder and I can't review code, even if it's open source. In general, honeypot websites are hard to detect because honeypot websites will try to stay undiscovered to get as much data as possible. No honeypot website will push, how it is a honeypot website.
Best red flags are community fedback or proof, where someone has review website code, it got leaked how a site is a honeypot website.
That's indeed a big problem. And you're indeed raising a good warning. But what's the way forward then? I guess that should be the more interesting part. Otherwise, we end up just talking about a problem we don't have a solution to. How can everybody then beware of such sites?
It's a very difficult queston because honeypot websites are extremely difficult to spot.
Of course, a honeypot website will stay undiscovered to be a honeypot website.
For normal people, only publicly proven websites might be entirely possible to avoid.
It's not possible to spot as a normal person, even experts might not know it because it's a sophisticated honeypot.
Because for most sites, it's not possible for normal people to spot if it's a known honeypot website or not.
Isn't it troubling? So, should we just avoid the internet as much as possible? Or should we use VPN all the time? Or should we all shift to the use of TOR browsers?
What would your advice be to minimize or perhaps to completely avoid exposure to these dangerous websites?
It is troubling because honeypot websites are cleary set up to be a honeypot for a long time and stay undetected.
VPN and general privacy advice is a very good point and in addition, we should always do a good research about proven honeypot websites. Because like Walletexplorer, it's containing a fine print, possibly because of EU or US data protection law, where it is mandatory to make any such practice public. So, it is available for us to know it's a honeypot website and we just need knowledge about it.
We can also help to spread knowledge when we know about it.
And we need good coders to review open source code and to report if it's a honeypot website.
In addition, open source code should be our selection over closed source code.
To share knowledge about proven honeypot websites, I've set up a new topic where we can collect proven honeypot websites:
Collection of proven honeypot sites – BEWARE to protect your privacy