2: Gift cards as an incentive aren't always bad. It's when they're confusing your personal vs. professional roles. For example, if a company reaches out offering a gift card in exchange for a personal G2 review or as part of a research initiative, I don't see a conflict there.
Even the "personal" outreaches, such as market research to poll you as a subject matter expert, no mention of your employer... might actually be to try to milk you for information about your employer.
It could be on behalf of competitors of the company, and it could also be on behalf of prospective investors in the company.
Just say no to anyone offering to pay you for a call like that.
However, they can be even more evil, and harder to weed out: rather than some market research pretext, they can pretend to approach you as a recruiter.
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Even the "personal" outreaches, such as market research to poll you as a subject matter expert, no mention of your employer... might actually be to try to milk you for information about your employer.
It could be on behalf of competitors of the company, and it could also be on behalf of prospective investors in the company.
Just say no to anyone offering to pay you for a call like that.
However, they can be even more evil, and harder to weed out: rather than some market research pretext, they can pretend to approach you as a recruiter.