How to Opt-Out of ZoomInfo

Data broker platforms such as ZoomInfo offer the ability to find someone’s address and contact information by simply entering their name and city where they live into a search bar. Unfortunately, marketers and scammers often use these sites to dig up information on individual people for cold-calling and nefarious purposes. If you’ve been getting a lot of cold calls or you’re seeing a lot of fake social media profiles popping up with your name and information attached to them, it might be because you’re being found on one of these platforms.

Fortunately, these platforms allow people to opt out, removing their information from the service so it cannot be so easily found. While opting out of a data broker platform might make it harder for your third cousin living in Alaska to find you, it’s a great way to enhance your privacy and avoid being scammed. Below, we’ll describe how to manually opt out of the data broker platform ZoomInfo. We will also discuss the value of using a data removal service like Incogni to do it for you.

What Is ZoomInfo?

ZoomInfo stands out from other data broker platforms by being business-oriented. The dashboard has an advanced search function that allows you to search for professionals using their name, industry, city where they live, job title, and more. The profiles generated by a search include various ways to contact these professionals, including their phone numbers, email addresses, and LinkedIn profile pages. ZoomInfo also gives businesses a way to find and contact potential clients, particularly key decision makers among organizations and businesses. According to ZoomInfo, more than 35,000 companies use its services for marketing. If you make purchasing decisions, someone is probably searching for you there.

Now, while those purposes are legitimate, the information contained in ZoomInfo’s records can be used by scammers to initiate spear phishing attacks, a type of phishing scam that targets businesses and organizations. That’s why we think it’s a good idea to opt out of this platform, especially if you are in management.

How to Opt-Out of ZoomInfo

It isn’t very difficult to opt out of ZoomInfo. However, like most data broker services, ZoomInfo doesn’t make it straightforward.

The first step is to navigate to the removal request page on the ZoomInfo website. Once there, we had to provide an email address, full name, and phone number of the person that we wanted removed. ZoomInfo then sent an email with the confirmation code to the address we provided.

However, after we entered the confirmation code, ZoomInfo told us that our email address wasn’t on record. So, we had to provide more information to establish our identity, which could then be removed from the system. This seems counterintuitive, but it ensures ZoomInfo gets all the information that needs to be taken down.

We were also asked why we wanted to remove our information, and if ZoomInfo wanted us to inform other data sites that we did not want our information collected. We simply said that we had a privacy concern, and we told them that we would like other data sites to be informed of our opt-out request. We also had to provide a work email where another confirmation code would be sent.

After entering that second confirmation code, ZoomInfo finally told us that our email address and associated information had been opted out of the system. We also received a confirmation email with this information. However, nowhere did it specify which other data broker sites it removed us from. In our experience, there are some networks of people search sites owned by the same organizations. For example, when we opted out of PeopleLooker, it actually led us to BeenVerified’s opt-out page. All we know about ZoomInfo is that it’s owned by DiscoverOrg, which is another business-focused data broker platform.