To assess any ICO project, you need to focus on its components.
I will not describe everything in detail, but only point out what to pay attention to. Most likely you knew a lot of this...
Website
Badly made or template site. Most thieves are too lazy or stingy, so this is the first, on what they save
Fake information about team members
If you cannot find members of the ICO team on social networks, dont find confirmation that they really participated and so on, then most likely the project is scam
White Paper
The alarming signs are the presence of plagiarism and unrealistic promises, the absence of a detailed plan explaining exactly how this project will achieve the set tasks
Unclear goals
Each project has its own goals. And they must be realistic, concrete and achievable in the foreseeable future
Repository
If ICO claims to use open source code, then check the repository to store the code for this project. The code should be updated periodically.
Information about the legal entity
Behind every ICO is a real company. Almost every country has a public registry, in which you can make sure that the company is actually registered there.
Thank you for giving the detailed instructions, I think the present is more careful when joining the ICO. You should carefully select exchange to trade, as there are now too many exchanges that can have multiple exchange will be deleted at any time.
i thonk taht we will hever ever be able to protect ourselves fully but we have to try and we need to follow scammers strategies