There are a lot of ways to identify fake icos but you need to take measure to protect your investment from fake icos

Don’t Disclose your private information- Participating in ICOs or airdrop is not a bad thing, but before having proper information, never disclose your private information like wallet information, number etc.

 Check and verify the name of the Founders and Co-Founders- Every Initial Coin the offering has a founder or a co-founder, but when the ICOs which are Fake put the name of founders who do not even exist. Before doing any activities related to ICOs the individual needs to check the names of the concerned person and check the person’s virtual credibility.

  Reliability of ESCROW- ESCROW is an online wallet which preserves the coin unless and until the transaction is done. But when we are doing a transaction we rely on any of the wallet platforms and the end result is the money is debited and the deal is unsuccessful: this means the ICOs are fake. So, while involving in certain constraint make sure they use ESCROW for offering ICOs.

 Get ahead with an email confirmation- Generally, a real airdrop shares the individual a confirmation mail, if you are not getting a confirmation mail on your registered mail id neither any OTP, you should walk –off from the deal.

source- https://cryptomaa.com/btc/protect-your-money-from-fake-ico-and-scam-cryptocurrency-projects/

There are a couple of things that you could look out for to spot an ico scam
You should always look out for the team members, make sure that you can put a face behind the project, without a face then you should be very wary
Make sure that you confirm and crosscheck any information before you invest your money into the project
Look at the previous places they have worked at

For ico scams they do not really put a lot of work into the project because they know that they will not be sticking around for long so they are always unprofessional looking and when you are reading their whitepaper you will observe that there are a lot of typos in the document, that is what I mostly look at when looking to invest in an ico

When the development team are not following up what they have promised such as coins on time and schedule for distribution.I think It easy to determine it by asking frequently at their telegram page and if they wont answer directly or it takes days for them to reply

good question, I took part a couple of times in companies that were successful in all the paramitres, but in the end it turned out to be mashenniki, I don’t know how to make the right choice today