You can avoid the worst of it by taking reasonable precautions. We recently donated to a GoFundMe run on behalf of a friend of a friend. It was a fatal acciden

You can avoid the worst of it by taking reasonable precautions. We recently donated to a GoFundMe run on behalf of a friend of a friend. It was a fatal accident that was reported in 5+ local news outlets, with multiple of those outlets linking to the GoFundMe. The local firefighters were one of the top donors to date. Between the personal connection and the other bits of evidence we were very sure that the fundraiser was run by a real person for a real father who really did lose family members and have others end up in the hospital. We obviously don't have any control over where the money ends up in the end, but we knew enough to be willing to risk it.