Regulasi aren't a golden bullet against scammers. As all those things become more obvious to the general public, scammers evolve to mimic decent projects with almost impeccable efficiency. Still, the most reasonable rule of investment isn't about ICOs or IPOs, it's just about your common sense. I mean no matter what, never spend more money than you can afford to lose.
Yes that has always been the number one rule, never to spend on a project an amount that is more than you can afford to lose. There are good projects that are still not successful at the end, that is why you should be careful with how much you're investing so that you don't lose your money in the project you're investing in.
But before that, you have to apply some measures to make sure that you're not investing your money in the wrong project.. No matter how much a scam project tries to pretend to be legit, the team will always show that they are fake, they are either going to impersonate people who are big in the industry or create a fake profile. This is one thing I know for sure that will always expose them. I don't think any scammer is ready to show off who they are when it comes to this because they will be traced and caught.