ZoomInfo’s privacy stance: good for the economy?
Jinfo Blog

By Jan Knight

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This week ZoomInfo weighed in on the issue of privacy rights. Their stated position in their Business Information Manifesto is that business/work information should be regulated in a different manner from personal and behavioural information. Business information being cited as job title, phone number, email and other basic organizational information.  ZoomInfo is a leading B2B directory and business information provider.

Privacy issues are a hot topic worldwide. Currently the US Senate is holding hearings on a number of pieces of legislation related to privacy.  While ZoomInfo supports regulation on the sharing and release of personal information (address, spouses name, age, health information) and behavioural information,  (tracking of personal online behaviour) it believes that  business information is different.

ZoomInfo’s Business Information Manifesto differentiates between types of information and cites the benefit of open, accurate business data. Yonatan Stern, CEO for ZoomInfo expresses his concern about current data inaccuracy providing barriers to companies needing to connect with each other. He points out that, historically, employee information has been seen as proprietary, often a decision made by a company to alleviate poaching of employees, but also to protect them. However, Stern believes that if individuals’ data is accurate and accessible to others (potential partners, collaborators, customers, service providers) then commerce can happen more efficiently and in a more timely manner. 

Some obvious arguments come to mind against allowing this type of business information to be totally open to all -- it will increase email spam, potentially increase unsolicited offerings from vendors, job seekers and “old boyfriends”. (I’m only partly joking about that last one.) Just how does one differentiate between business and private?  Some employees believe that the privacy of their business/employee data (where they work, title, and contact information) provides a bit of a safe haven for them in this online world where people can be found so easily.

Conversely, some employees choose to ‘broadcast’ this information freely via their social media profiles. Although some companies have social media policies in place that employees must adhere to many don’t. I’m sure those who perform competitive profiling research or CI have often found very useful information by “digging around” in the more common professional social media sites like LinkedIn or Plaxo. Which leads me to suggest an obvious benefit of ZoomInfo’s view.

I’m a business researcher who conducts competitive profiling and often looks for companies for clients to partner with or sell to. Searching for, and being able to contact, specific employees within a company would certainly speed up the process.  As information workers we have to keep a watchful eye on regulation. It may be that we hold different views based on our role of the day – “researcher” versus “private citizen with an old boyfriend"!

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