Telemarketers, Spammers Looking For New Channels

from the just-can't-stop-it dept

It's popular these days to talk about putting in place technical and legal barriers to direct marketers and spammers. It sounds nice, but people forget that every time you put up barriers in front of these sorts of people, they seem to figure out new (and potentially more annoying) ways to reach you. So, it's no surprise to see these two articles show up on the same day. First, we find out that telemarketers are exploring other ways to get their message out there, including convincing people to "opt-in" for telemarketing pitches. Meanwhile, the spammers are branching out as well, adding comment spam to blogs, spamming instant messenger users and using mobile phone text messaging spam. No matter what we do, it appears these folks think it's their right to bug the crap out of the rest of us. I'm guessing that it's wishful thinking to hope for universal enlightenment among these folks to realize that annoying people is not the best way to get their message across. I can dream, though.
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