Is this Free Offer legitimate?

We all come across so many free offers daily, whether its blogs, emails, websites and sometimes its hard to differentiate the legitimate offers from the scams. It's taken me some time to learn this and from my experience I definitely have learned the hard way- I have had my share of freebies that never came and an ever increasing spam mail collection.

The key concept for legitimate freebies is to look who is offering the freebie, do I know the company like Dunkin Donuts or Pantene or is it one I have never heard of. Now, there is plenty of great free stuff out there from companies I have never heard of, but a quick google of the company name, can tell me a lot. Look at the company website, is it professional looking or is it some kind of form just to get your personal information. Also, when there is too much to fill out it may be a red flag as well. The main thing is follow your gut feeling and although its nice to get lots of free things, if you are not sure about the validity of the freebie and want to protect your privacy its probably worth it to just skip that offer rather than pay the price later.