It truly feels like some ICOs you see are a scam. I mean, like 20% of them use the same website design. How is that even possible? Due to laziness?
Whitepapers written with tons of mistakes, no teams, no real announcements or plans.

I think that most of the time you will notice something is wrong.

Looking up the creators is important. If they have nothing to back up their ICO, why invest at all?
Is there media buzz surrounding the ICO?
Do they have serious community manager support?
There are many things to watch out for.

But the real talk here is, you can't ever use a line "safe ICO investment". Investment of any kind is never safe. Otherwise you can't call it investment at all.