B2B (business-to-business) data brokers like RocketReach and ZoomInfo build their databases by crawling and indexing publicly available information from websites and social media, with a heavy emphasis on LinkedIn. They collect and sell work and personal email addresses, phone numbers, job titles, and company demographics for over 500 million professionals, primarily serving sales, marketing, and recruiting organizations.
People want off these sites for a range of reasons: unwanted outreach from sales reps and recruiters, exposure of personal emails and cell phone numbers, social engineering and phishing risks, and broader privacy and safety concerns.
Why EasyOptOuts doesn't remove your info from B2B Data Brokers
Most of our customers want their professional contact information to remain online. It's helpful for networking, getting new jobs, and its presence can push your other personal information further down search results, making it harder to find your more sensitive PII.
Also, unlike consumer data brokers, B2B data brokers often require access to an email address already listed on your profile in order to locate your record and process a removal request. Since we can't access your professional email inboxes, these opt-outs need to be completed manually.
How to opt out of nine B2B data brokers
These are some of the most prominent sites sharing your professional information. Here's where to go to remove your information from each one:
Check your LinkedIn privacy settings
Since B2B data brokers rely heavily on LinkedIn to build their databases, updating your LinkedIn privacy settings is an important step toward preventing future data collection.
Profile Visibility
You can control what non-members and search engines like Google or Bing see when they look up your name:
- Go to LinkedIn and open Settings.
- Select Visibility.
- Click Public profile settings.
- Scroll down to Edit visibility.
- You can toggle Your profile's public visibility to Off to hide your profile entirely from public view.
Opt Out of LinkedIn's AI Training Data Collection
In 2024, LinkedIn began collecting user data to train its AI systems. Here are steps to opt out:
- Go to LinkedIn and open Settings.
- Select Data Privacy.
- Find Data for Generative AI Improvement.
- Toggle the setting to Off.
Opting out of these sites won't happen overnight, but working through the list and locking down your LinkedIn puts you in a much better position to control who has access to your professional contact information.
If you want to make your home address, personal phones and emails, and family information harder to find, check out our guide to suppressing your information in search engines.