The Rules to Break, 3rd Edition

RULE 6

There’s no such thing as a free lunch

Back in the nineteenth century, a lot of US saloon bars would offer free lunches. Sometimes these could be decent meals, but of course you’d want a drink with your food, maybe two … and the drinks weren’t free. The fact is that there’s always a catch, and while extreme cynicism may not be an ideal quality, a bit of healthy scepticism is never a bad thing. And most of all when the thing you’re being offered looks too good to be true. Because it probably is.

Any commercial organization is in it to make profits. And even if you can’t see how they’re making money out of you, in a normal transaction they will be. They’re offering you a free prize draw in order to capture your data to sell, or that bargain ...