actually there are. for example during 2017 whoever owned any amount of bitcoin (own means having the private key of the address holding those "coins" not having it on some exchange) received more than 50 different coins for free. all of them are shitcoins but they could all be dumped for valuable bitcoin so it was free money.
but generally speaking you are correct. every time you see someone is promising "easy money" they are most probably lying and are trying to scam you. it is definitely a scam if you are supposed to download/install something.
but generally speaking you are correct. every time you see someone is promising "easy money" they are most probably lying and are trying to scam you. it is definitely a scam if you are supposed to download/install something.
Receiving forked coins still doesn't count as free coins, because you had to invest in Bitcoin in the first place. People who are too broke to own any meaningful amount of coins couldn't get any forks.
And that's where it is: we can choose to be pedantic however we want but the idea of "free" is a very fluid definition. WLOG this can also be applied to nearly every single word in existence, and beyond that, every single thought in existence - who's to say that I can't define X as Y? Convention? Status quo? From a meta standpoint those cannot be infallible means and processes for which we determine validity. 
Let's be honest: most of the time, you look upon the word "free" as "no monetary cost" and to that extent, unless you're being extremely anal about external costs (i.e. electricity, physical energy, etc) faucets should be considered "free money".
Let's be honest: most of the time, you look upon the word "free" as "no monetary cost" and to that extent, unless you're being extremely anal about external costs (i.e. electricity, physical energy, etc) faucets should be considered "free money".
Faucets require a ton of time and very repetitive work in order to receive "free" money, to the point were it can be considered a very bad job. If the reward/effort ratio was much higher, then they could have been considered free coins.
I think the best example of free coins was airdrops - you just had to post your altcoin address and you received coins that you could then dump on exchanges. In earlier days you could get a couple of dollars worth of coins from each such airdrop, if you managed to sell it.