A team has names and photos — how do you know they're real?

"Doxxed" isn't the same as "verified." Here's how to actually check the people behind a project.

A project page with headshots, full names, and job titles feels reassuring — but a photo and a name cost nothing to invent. Stock images, AI-generated faces, and borrowed identities all show up regularly. "The team is public" only helps you if the public team is actually real and actually working on this project. That's a separate check, and it's not hard to do.

What actually verifies a team:

• Reverse-image-search the photos. If a "founder's" headshot is a stock photo or belongs to someone with a different name, you're done — that's a fabricated identity.
• Cross-check LinkedIn and history. A real professional usually has a trail: prior roles, a network, activity that predates this project. A profile created last month with three connections is a flag.
• Match claims to reality. "Ex-Google," "advised by [big name]" — these are checkable. Look for the claim confirmed from the other side (the person's own profile, the company), not just asserted on the project's page.
• See if the person acknowledges the project publicly. Someone genuinely involved will usually reference it somewhere they control — their own account, a talk, a post — not only appear on the project's own website.

Why this matters to you specifically: a named team is only a positive signal if the names hold up. Treating "they're not anonymous" as reassurance — without spending five minutes confirming the people exist and are really involved — is exactly the gap that fake-team projects rely on.