Simon Mcdougall0:01
Hello. My name is Simon McDougall and I am ZoomInfo's Chief Compliance Officer. Today we're going to walk through some common misconceptions about what ZoomInfo does.
So let's be clear about this. ZoomInfo does collect personal data, but it's not sensitive data. The information we're interested in is information about somebody in a business context. It's the kind of information you would see on a business card or a resume. It's job title, it's contact information. It is not the wider world of sensitive data. We're not interested in someone's social security number or their home details. We are interested in connecting business people with business people for business purposes, and that's what we do.
So whenever we create a new record at ZoomInfo, we send a notification email to the individual whose record we have created, and we do that around the world regardless of whether local law requires us to do so. We just go and do it everywhere. This means we send tens of millions of notification emails every year, and we're looking to always improve that process and make sure those emails are delivered. We're also going to carry on re-notifying people on a periodic basis so that we maximize the chance that people see these notifications.
We want to make it as easy as possible for you to opt out. There are basically four ways you can do this. If you have received a notification email, the directions are in there to opt out. You can also come onto our website and use our privacy center to opt out on the website itself. Thirdly, you can just email
[email protected] and we'll manage your request through the email. And lastly, we have a phone number on the screen right now — always wanted to do that — where we'll manage your request via the phone number.
All ZoomInfo is interested in doing is connecting business people to business people to talk business. So we're not trying to develop a really deep, extensive profile of an individual which covers all the other aspects of their home life and personal life. We're really interested in the kind of information you would normally see on a business card or in a resume, and that enables people to contact one another and understand what they do.
Every company is always trying to understand its customers as best it can. This means they are always trying to update the information around those customers and gain insights into what their interests are and how they can best meet their needs. All ZoomInfo is doing is trying to help its customers do just that. So we are trying to create the most accurate business contact information and create insights around those organizations in a business context, and in doing so, all we're doing is supporting our customers in their ordinary business activities.
GDPR compliance is really important to ZoomInfo and it's important to me personally. When I joined ZoomInfo from the Information Commissioner's Office in early 2022, you'll understand I was very interested in our compliance and how we did this. I was really pleased to understand that we had a lying down notification process with Article 14 of the GDPR way back in 2018 and that we applied that benchmark across the board.
ZoomInfo is the anti-spam platform. We are interested in making sure that every business conversation we support is as informed and relevant as possible and leverages the full weight of our database and has the most accurate information to hand for each caller and each conversation.
So at ZoomInfo, we're interested in business information in a business context. We have no interest in reading people's emails and we do not read the content of people's emails. We have a product called Community Edition, and if somebody signs up for Community Edition, we have technology which will look at their signature block and the headers of the emails in their inbox. All we are doing there is seeking to identify business contact information in order to supplement our database and create new records with business contact information and job title. That is all that product does.
