You’ve probably never heard of RocketReach, but they’ve heard of you. And they’ve got me properly riled up.
I just want people to leave me alone. My job is hard enough as it is, without people sliding into my inbox 24/7.
- Hey, got time for a quick 15 minute chat about this random tool you’ll never use? NO
- Hi, I’d love to chat with you about a potential partnership with-GO AWAY.
- We really think your organisation could benefit from- JUST LEAVE ME ALONE.
- I noticed you haven’t replied to our previous emails; just checking you didn’t miss this. I DIDN’T MISS IT I’M DELIBERATELY IGNORING YOU.
It’s constant, and it’s draining. I don’t know who out there is telling people that spamming folks with cold emails is the way to grow your business, but I’m begging them to stop.
I mean, it must be working, or they wouldn’t do it. But it’s just incredibly frustrating. Especially if you’re someone like me that doesn’t like to be mean to people. My deeply-instilled British values of politeness mean it pains me to ignore these people.
But I have to, or I wouldn’t be able to function. Just replying to these people would be a full-time job.
So imagine my dismay when I discovered there are websites out there specialising in making it even easier to contact me. And one of the worst offenders out there is RocketReach.
RocketReach makes you easier to find online, whether you like it or not.
RocketReach describes itself as “the world’s largest and most accurate database of emails and direct dials“.
That’s a pretty polite way of them saying that they’re a data harvesting company. They make it easy for those sleazy salespeople who make my life miserable to keep doing that. They even have a browser extension!
Whether you like it or not, RocketReach creates a profile for you. You probably have one already. Maybe go and check.
Don’t remember giving them your details? That’s because you didn’t! This is all scraped from various places for your pleasure. Here’s how they describe that process:
RocketReach upholds strict ethical standards and is legally compliant. We mine profile information using a combination of a web crawler (similar to Google) and data mining algorithms such as entity recognition, email prediction etc. In essence, the information provided by our site is already publicly accessible on the internet. If our crawlers can find it, so can Google, Bing etc. Email addresses listed on our site are either found via entity search or predicted.
Well, at least they’re violating your privacy and consent with “strict ethical standards”. And what strikes me about this explanation is how blazé they are about it. Hey, they say, this is all online or guessable anyway, what’s the big deal?
And sure, they’re right, just like if you stand outside my house long enough, you’ll probably be able to see me through the window. And if you followed me out of the house and down the street, you’d know where I was going. If you then published a dossier filled with pictures of me and details of my comings and goings, I’d throw my hands in the air and declare “fair play; it’s all publicly accessible information!”. (Actually, I wouldn’t say that. I am joking).
It’s so strange to me that the people at RocketReach are just happily building this Orwellian database without just constantly asking themselves, “are we the baddies?”
RocketReach seems to be a bit self-aware, at least.
Start Googling “is RocketReach…” and you’ll get results like “Is RocketReach legit” and “Is RocketReach legal?” RocketReach themselves have quite smartly written a blog post that turns up as one of the first results for these searches, trying to address the concerns.
The blog post doesn’t address the creep-factor of what they’re doing and includes gems like this:
RocketReach is trusted by salespeople and recruiters in some of the largest companies on the planet — Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, to name a few. Google and Amazon have over 400 employees each who trust and use RocketReach everyday. That’s about as legit as it gets.
Hey RocketReach! If you’re trying to alleviate my concerns about being creeping with my data, maybe don’t use Facebook or Google to back up your argument! Maybe pick companies that aren’t constantly under scrutiny for how they process user data!
Don’t forget that RocketReach is a paid service, too. From just £28 per month, you can look up 1,500 profiles of people who never agreed to have their data sold.
The price goes up to £50 if you want their direct phone numbers too. And I’ve been on the receiving end of one of these phone calls; it was a horrible experience! The ‘Business Development’ person rang me up DURING WORK HOURS, ON MY PERSONAL NUMBER, to try and pitch me some whatever. I was so baffled. After politely declining, I chased up with an email to get off their database and to find out where they’d got my number in the first place. Thanks, RocketReach!
Yes, you can opt out, but…
As soon as I found out I was on this hell database, I tried to get off it. RocketReach has a tiny “Do Not Sell My Info” button on their site, which lets you request to remove your info. But to do so, you have to give them MORE information first, so they can verify it’s really you asking to have your details removed.
And it also doesn’t quite feel like enough. Great, you can take my details down when requested. But I never asked to be harvested in the first place! And I’m no GDPR expert, but it all feels a bit iffy to me.
I got into an email exchange with RocketReach about this, and they weren’t very helpful. They pointed me to a help article which explains: “Our Company and Professional profiles are generated by tying together 100s of pieces of data using learning algorithms“. But that still doesn’t feel like enough. This ‘tying together’ smells like data processing to me, and I don’t consent!
I don’t usually make a big deal about privacy. I know that I’m exposing myself far more than what RocketReach do by using Facebook or using Google products. But the fact that RocketReach so gleefully sells this data on to the kind of people that make me miserable makes me want to do something about it.
So I went to the ICO. And they were pretty helpful! Submitting a complaint was pretty straightforward, and I just had to chase RocketReach down for a ‘final response’ – which amounted to them saying, “We have nothing else to say”. The final judgement wasn’t quite what I hoped, but fair.
I’ll post it in full here 👇
The ICO response on RocketReach’s harvesting of my data
You have raised a complaint about RocketReach’s use of your personal data. Your personal data has now been removed from their website, but you remain concerned about how this information was obtained in the first place.
In response to your concerns, Rocket Reach informed you that their data is collected and inferred from user contributions, public records and licensed from third party providers.
You explain that RocketReach have aggregated and bundled your data without your consent and that this processing was intrusive when you were not aware of this organisation’s existence.
Organisations do not need an individual’s consent to process personal data in all cases. Consent is one of six lawful bases an organisation may rely on to comply with data protection principles, please find further information here: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/does-an-organisation-need-my-consent/.
In this case, it appears likely RocketReach are processing personal data in their legitimate business interests. Processing in these circumstances should be within the individuals reasonable expectations and have minimal privacy impact.
We consider the privacy impact of this processing to be low as the data used appears to have been publicly available and does not appear to be sensitive.
I understand however, that you don’t consider processing in this case was within your reasonable expectations. Organisations must balance their interests in processing the data with the impact on individuals. To assess whether processing could be reasonably expected, organisations should consider relevant factors such as how data was collected, whether they have an existing relationship with the individual and whether individuals were informed about the processing.
In this case, it appears there was no pre-existing relationship between you and RocketReach therefore, it is harder to demonstrate that processing can be reasonably expected. Furthermore, where data is obtained from third party providers, the organisation needs to consider what individuals were told about how their data might be passed on to others.
We will now contact RocketReach on this matter to provide advice and guidance on what they need to consider to ensure data is processed within reasonable expectations in compliance with their data protection obligations.
In summary: what they’re doing isn’t illegal and isn’t doing much harm anyway. But they were going to check in with RocketReach anyway. This was back in October, and I haven’t heard anything since. So I assume nothing’s changed.
Still, it was worth a shot! And at least my details are safe now?
Wrong. My details are not safe.
The problem is that RocketReach isn’t the only company doing this. This is an entire INDUSTRY.
There’s Cognism, Lusha, GetEmail, People Data Labs, Snov.io, ZoomInfo, UpLead, Lead411, LeadIQ, Apollo.io, Hunter, and loads more! What exactly are you meant to do? Submit takedown requests for all of them? I’m not playing whack-a-mole with my data; it’s a game I can’t win. If the ICO thinks it’s harmless, it doesn’t sound like there’s much we can do.
UPDATE: Friend of the blog Tyler has shared a link to DeleteMe – a service that offers you protection against this kind of thing. But it’s a paid service, so no good. You shouldn’t need to pay to not be harvested! A racket on top of a racket.
What you can do
But maybe together we can do something. Firstly, check and see if you’ve got a profile on these sites. If you do, ask them to take it down. And then spread the word, tell others to check their profiles too.
I think most people have no idea this is happening. And given how outraged people get the things Facebook are doing, they should feel just as strongly about this.
Meanwhile, I’m taking a more hardline attitude towards unsolicited cold emails. I’m aggressively marking emails as spam (I think it helps?), and I’m declining LinkedIn requests like Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix.
It’s not much, but it’s worth it for a bit of a quieter life.
Having been targeted by online harassment recently, I had done a huge overhaul on my online visibility and tightened up all my privacy. Do a sweep every month or so … could not believe this was available. All without my consent as none of the information was in the public domain – can’t believe they found a picture of me as I’ve removed all pictures of me or hidden them behind strict privacy settings. It’s scary – what do you do if someone is physically threatening you and companies like this have posted your information everywhere for anyone to access?
Could you please let me know how you finally removed your data from Rocketsearch ? Did again providing the information – Name , Org details and Email and then proceeding help in removing your data from Rocketsearch ?
Hi – there is a pretty straightforward way to remove your profile (I’ve just done it after finding I was here… and battling emails and cold calls for the past 18 months)…
Anyway, check this link – first claim your profile, then there is a removal link.
https://knowledgebase.rocketreach.co/hc/en-us/articles/234810007-How-did-my-profile-get-on-RocketReach-
Is there anyway we can lobby our MP’s to stop this?
Hey Cookywook,
I stumbled across this article today because I was looking at using rocketreach for business purposes. I am a commercial real estate agent in California. I have been in the industry for 6 months and am still figuring out my prospecting system. Your opinion on this topic is interesting as I do a lot of cold emails and “cold outreach” to business professionals. I would imagine that if you feel this way other business professionals could feel similarly.
From your perspective, what would be the best way for me to reach business professionals for sales purposes without being intrusive? The services we provide genuinely help the people who need them at pivotal moments, and my job is to offer those services in digestible, non-intrusive methods. What would you recommend? Really curious about your take on this one.
Kind regards,
Jordan
I get asked this a lot and I don’t have a good answer, but I also don’t think it’s on me to provide a solution. I don’t work in sales, and I wouldn’t be very good at it if I did.
I find the whole idea of individual reach-outs icky. I’m on the receiving end of it pretty much constantly in my current role, and it’s just annoying. If I need a tool/service, I’ll go and find it on my own – I’m not idly waiting for someone to slide into my inbox with a solution.
It’s also the passive aggressive tactics I can’t stand. Email after email, with “Let us know if you’re the wrong person to talk to” chasing. I’ve also had messages sent to my personal email, or calls to my personal phone – which I consider pretty unacceptable.
I know this doesn’t reflect every single person that works in sales. But it’s enough for me to take a pretty hardline stance on it.
I work in Marketing. So my advice is always this: make a product people actually want to use, and do your best to raise awareness of it. They’ll come to you, and you won’t need to call them up at home on the weekends.
I find it disgusting as to how they can get away with it. They should be penalised heavily for beach of data protection and gathering every little information and post it all on one page without the owner’s consent. Worst part is they ask for more private information before they can remove it your details from the hideous site!
Absolutely disgusting and unethical and certainly breach of data protection and personal safety and security. I feel absolutely harassed that they actually listed my work email and telephone number without my authorisation.
I certainly would like scrutinise their unethical practice and take full action against their directors and employees.
One of the Rocketcrap employees profile boasts about stalking people personal linkedin profiles. How is that even allowed? In the eyes of the law this is classed as braking the law. I’m sure if someone stalking on someone’s window they will certainly get arrested. Next they will be sneaking through my window trying to find out what bloody colour socks I’m wearing!
I have tried to speak to an agent via the online chat to remove me and they kept referring me to provide more details about my personal life before they can remove me, they should not be exposing my bloody details in the first place. Twats!
Let’s turn the table round shall we.. I’m making this perineal and I will definitely expose all those idiots working for this useless so called research company..
Let’s start with the hideous looking pic
1- Tori Loiacono – what kind of name is that, is it even real? As per her profile, She is an expert in stalking on peoples profile.
2- Chris – Co founder apparently, with no second name but there is another hideous picture of him and I’m sure If I search the web I will find out where he lives and what his number is.
3- Brian Ray looks like a Paedophile – Leary to say.
4- Nathan Choi – can barely speak English by the looks of him.
5- HeathCkiff Rothman – not sure what he/it is… but by the looks of him… needless to say.
6- Niklas Anzingiry – is that even a real name?, but he looks like he was roped into this scam and has no idea how reputations damaging working for such a disgraceful organisation.
Last but not least,
7- the owner is Amit Shanbhag, I bet it’s him always scam PPI fraudster calling me with his funny accent… matches his pic.
Let’s expose where they live and nail it down to what colour socks they wear…
Who’s in ?
I’m going to find the right government authorities and law enforcements agencies to clamp down on such unethical breach of data protection and security breach of personal data, those idiots will pay for this!
No wonder lately i have been receiving high volume of fraud calls!!!
One of my clients at http://www.fortrantraffic.com will not stop getting harassed by sales people who found us through Rocket Reach. This was very helpful to solving that problem. Crazy that this can exist. I’ve worked in Sales (arguably still do) so I understand the need to find contacts but still. Feels like too much.