Online Privacy and the Swimming Pool

I recently found a profile for myself on a website called ZoomInfo.com, a site that purports to be an "employment search engine." As someone who works in marketing, I think that is a very nice way of putting what these people do. I came to find I had a profile page on their site, with my resume, but without my having created a profile. What they had done was to find mentions of my name on other websites, then used it to build their own profile. they claim that this information comes from "online references," meaning this is stuff anyone could find anyway. When I followed up on what these references were, however, all they seemed to find was Mighty Interactive's press release when I was hired two years ago - not my resume. Where did they get that then? My guess is either they trolled the profile pages of Linkedin, where my profile is supposedly private, or Monster.com has been selling user information again. (It may be practically impossible to get a job using Monster.com, but at least they keep my junk mail folder full.) My suggestion to you is that you do a check for your own profile on this site, if only to remove it. Here's what you do: First, do a search on Google for your name. The best way to do that is with: site:www.zoominfo.com "[your name]" You may not come directly to your own profile on Google, but a search on the site itself may turn you up instead. If you do find it, and want it gone, copy the URL and send it to remove@zoominfo.com, along with the URL for your profile. This is what I did this morning. While I may not be able to control who knows what about me online, I certainly do not like helping websites make their money off of my information. If these ZoomInfo cretins offer such a great product, certainly they can get me to make my own profile, willingly. Trolling other sites for my resume in hopes that I will register and update the information, (in other words, updating their "content,") shows that they do not have a competitive product, and therefore must resort to being unethical. You may not be able to protect your information from all of the sites that trade in it. As Joe Rogan said on the TV show News Radio: "Dude, you can’t take something off the Internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." But certainly, you can try. Okay - off to kill some more windmills.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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