While I agree with most of your concerns, if you can manage to find the signup banner for a survey/research company called PineCone Research, they ACTUALLY pay.
Example: I did a survey for them Monday night and got the $5 payment from them credited to my PayPal account on Tuesday.
Unfortunately, they do not tend to send more than a survey or two per month, so no way are you going to get "rich" doing them, and they only take new members as needed. But, their surveys only take, generally, 10-15 minutes to complete and you can make $5 without even leaving the house...I've been PAID $20, so far, in the last couple of months.
I would like to find more like them instead of the "other" kind of companies!