What’s Worse? Spam Or Telemarketers?

12 December 2007 Written By: Jim KukralComments: Comments

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95% of ALL email sent in 2007 was spam, or so says the spam-experts.

There was a time–2004 to be precise–when spam “only” consumed 70 percent of all e-mail. Those were the good old days. Today, as Barracuda Networks’ annual spam report shows, upwards of 95 percent of all e-mail is spam. In 2001, the number was 5 percent.

Here’s the killer stat though. Bold is mine.

It has come to the point that, as a separate Barracuda survey of 261 business professionals shows, we increasingly prefer telemarketing to e-mail spam.

You know? I tend to agree. Email spam is manageable if you use the right stuff to catch it. Although, there’s nothing more annoying than getting a phone call during dinner from a predatory lender.

What’s your take? Spam or telemarketing?

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  • I'll take spam any day of the week. I can't stand telemarketers. Besides the fact that they are annoying, they are usually so pissed off at the world that they act like d%#k's on the phone. They are totally self-righteous and ignorant and I love seeing the big telemarketing companies getting their asses sued off for bad business practices.
  • Alex
    Spam is worse. I spend more time in front of the computer than hiding by my home telephone waiting it to ring. ......oh yeah, a majority of people these days depend on their cell phones anyway...
  • That's easy; telemarketing is way worse: email does not interrupt your sleep, disturb your meals, bath, quality time with husband/children etc. etc. simply delete spam. You certainly do not need to spend time talking to it.
  • Neither thanks!

    ;)
    DJF
  • I dunno I think I am kinda partial to spam, I practically lived off it as a young bachelor.

    But seriously, as much as telemarketing seems to be the biggest pain due to the fact that someone feels I need to think about switching to sattelite service at 8am on Sunday morning I think spam is probably worse in the sheer randomness of it. Telemarketers (mostly) work off of some sort of targeted list where you quite possibly could be in the marketing demographic for the product they are pitching. Spam on the other hand is completely based upon the laws of lets see how many people I can hit with this and who is going to click on me. I would guess that the ROI on spam is a pretty decent number otherwise it would not be as prevalent. After all who knew that I could get a larger piano to make my woman happy without surgery.

    -s3
  • Telemarketing is worse, hands down. As a Network Administrator, spam had once made my life hell, but like you said with the correct setup Spam is manageable- and it is at work now. Gmail is what I use for my personal email, and it does a more than an adequate job with spam. Spam takes little time or effort from me these days. I get telemarketers at work mainly, and more and more lately on my cell phone, the latter of which is really beginning to piss me off. I could go on and on- but suffice it to say I believe telemarketers are direct descendants of the devil himself.

    Jim
  • Since I never answer a phone, I would have to say I hate email spam the most.

    I'm a neutered cat! What the hell am I going to do with Viagra? Or a Rolex? Look at my watch and say, "Time for a stiffie?" I don't think so!

    Thankfully it's all managable with spam filters. I guess Caller-ID is something of a manual version of a spam filter...
  • Spam is waaay worse than telemarketers!
    I don't have to sift through 200 telemarketing phone calls to get to my 'real' calls everyday.
  • I would say Telemarkers or annoying networks/sales guys calling me are the worst. There is nothing I hate more than a number calling my cell and it ends up being someone I don't want to talk with. Email I can just delete or auto-filter.
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