Students and researchers reaching out to collect data is very different from marketers trying to sell you something. These folks aren't marketing, they are try

Students and researchers reaching out to collect data is very different from marketers trying to sell you something. These folks aren't marketing, they are trying to learn something about the world and then share that with the rest of us. We would probably benefit in the long run by participating, but I know we all have limited time and survey research has its flaws. Still I wouldn't call them bad actors, they're acting in the public interest (building humanity's knowledge base). Just ignore them if you don't have time to participate. If they're trying to build a startup and sell you that startup that's different, but you don't seem to be listing startups you seem to be listing researchers. If you want to talk about tech sales people with no respect for boundaries desperately willing to do anything to sell you something you don't want and don't need - then yeah, lets rage against that. I've been in a role where I became a target for tech SDRs and it was absolutely miserable. My phone wound up in a sales database and I came very close to changing my phone number (a number I've had for almost 20 years). It stopped when I left that role - thankfully. The last year I was in it, in particular, once they got a hold of my phone number was miserable. Multiple sales calls a day, my work inbox snowed under, often 3+ outreaches followed by a phone call. One SDR emailed me 6 times, called me, I chewed him out on the phone and then he emailed me again. I blocked his email and then instituted a policy of silently marking any 3rd outreach as spam. I wish phones had a similar feature.