Zoominfo Just Cancelled My Account!

I admit I actually laughed when this appeared on my Blackberry.  It had the subject line “Your Zoominfo inquiry” and the body said.

Your ZoomInfo account has been deactivated. ZoomInfo's Terms of Service require users to agree that they will not "impersonate any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent" their affiliation with a person or entity, and our records show that you have violated these terms. You can view our Terms of Service at this link: http://content.zoominfo.com/About2/AboutUs/index.php/terms-of-service

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

[name redacted]

Product Support

Zoom Information, Inc.

In case this email does not fully answer your question, or you would like to contact us for any reason, simply reply to this email.

Reference number: [redacted reference number] Please use this ticket number in any correspondence with us.

Now that was completely fair.  I am not Tom Petty.  But I wrote back saying why I created the profile and then saying:

Now your company has claimed that Christine O'Donnell has verified her profile on your site.  So I am asking you to reveal enough information to prove she really verified it.  Namely, I want you to release the email address associated with that profile, and even the IP address, if that information is available.  If not to me, then to an appropriately skeptical reporter.

As it is, the only evidence that Ms. O'Donnell actually created that profile is your company's word.  Given that this sort of thing might decide an election, you have a duty to share this information.

I’ll keep you posted.

Update: Zoominfo responded sending me a link to the original press release on the subject.  I wrote back asking, more or less, why don’t you just release the email?  Again, I will keep you posted.

Update:  And this is hilarious...  The fake profile is still up, I guess twitching like a newly decapitated chicken.  Heh.

Update: Another response:

Contrary to your statement, we have not heard from Christine O'Donnell about the ZoomInfo profile in her name. You may be thinking about the public comments made regarding the LinkedIn profile in her name. ZoomInfo has no relationship with LinkedIn and the profiles were created independently on our respective websites.

ZoomInfo will cooperate with legal authorities who ask for the email address of the registrant. The ZoomInfo privacy policy reads as follows:

Disclosures under Law

We make every effort to preserve user privacy. We cooperate with legal authorities when we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on ZoomInfo.

Mmm, I am 90% sure she disavowed that one too.  But I will find out.  Truly, I am treating this as open source, right now.

Update: Dustin over at Patterico points out that O’Donnell denied it well enough for press purposes, here:

"I know I never created a LinkedIn profile for myself," O'Donnell said. "I don't even know what Zoom is."

I will ask if that is good enough for zoominfo’s purposes.  It honestly might not be.  But at least we can say that, yes, that is a denial.  I love how the internet is so open source that way.

Final Update: I won’t bore you with a full quote, but the short version is that since Christine O’Donnell didn’t personally contact them, they don’t feel comfortable releasing that information.  Fair enough.  We’ll see what happens.