Its not that easy to detect the plight of icos before they are launched. Since there has been a lot of projects splurging, a lot of investors who want to earn a great deal open their investments to these icos. But most of the time, it would be too late to find out if the ico is legit or not.
Here are some pointers that warns us if an ico is a scam:
The website authenticity
The whitepaper clearly states the project details and the time table
The people behind the project
The majority of scam icos have been using the photo that has been taken from the internet. that's really important to do a research about the photo of the team rather than try do focus on the their whitepaper.
So many scam hunter has been doing this way to reveal the true identity of the scam ico itself.