Interesting that one of the "non-scam" examples described in this article is Free Credit Reports, a company that has run afoul of the FTC for hitting people with a $14.95 a month charge after their so-called free report. Doesn't sound like a scam at all...
In the US there are four major consumer credit bureaus (Experian,Equifax,TransUnion,Innovis). The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 included a proposed rule change to require credit bureaus to offer a free credit report, once per year, to anyone who asked.
Experian fought this proposal tooth and nail. They lost.
So they rolled out freecreditreport.com, with it's scammy operations and unavoidable advertisement.
I guess if you can't beat 'em, then carpet-bomb the market with ads to confuse people, seed Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt into the whole idea of 'free' credit reports and make a few bucks on the side. (The other bureaus quickly followed suit with their own operations)
On the plus side, these scam-tactics are specifically addressed (somewhat) in the Credit Card Act of 2009.
I used FCR once years ago and found no problem with it. The credit report was free, and it was pretty clear that getting it enrolled you in a free trial of some credit monitoring service that was fairly easy to cancel, which I did immediately. I'm not one of those people who sends every Terms of Use I come across to my lawyer, but I definitely found it clearly worded enough that I didn't get hit with a single bill.
I did not know about the FTC thing. Perhaps they hid it better after I used it. It currently says, in perfectly legible text on their homepage:
"IMPORTANT INFORMATION
When you order your free report here, you will begin your free trial membership in Triple Advantage(SM). If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership."
It's exactly this sort of thing that makes me leery of calling things scams. Having a free trial, or some free hook to get people into your service legitimately is not a scam. But there are enough stupid people out there who will sign up accidentally that they often get labeled as such.'
Nonetheless that wasn't even the point of that small segment of the article, which is that Arrington overestimates by an order of magnitude how much money is coming from "scams".
"The other one allows me to block offers I don’t like, and I do this whenever we get complaints about specific ones. That’s not easy because often the customer doesn’t even remember the name of the offer that sucked them in, but I do my best to hunt them down and make sure they’re never seen on our games again. "
Shouldn't it be possible to flag offers as potential scams using something like a spam filter? I'm guessing you have access to the text and can find find print like "$10 monthly charge will be applied" or whatever. You don't have to block it on the first showing but just flag it for follow-up.