Comment by streblo
8 hours ago
Everyone in this thread suggesting a “data leak” or “compromise” is totally missing the fact that this is how Apollo works. This is often times overlooked by Apollo customers themselves. You have to opt out of customer data sharing (and in doing so lose out on the value of the product): https://knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/20727684184589...
Not commenting on whether this is good or ethical (or even totally legal), but this is what is happening behind the scenes.
For a little more color for people unfamiliar with modern sales/marketing:
1. A user signs up to BrowserStack
2. BrowserStack (automatically) upload the submitted user’s information to Apollo
3. Apollo “enrich” the user’s details using information they already have about the person, e.g: company revenue, LinkedIn profile
4. Sales reps at BrowserStack use the enriched information to identify leads, bucket for marketing etc.
Apollo’s customer data sharing adds any information BrowserStack send to Apollo to the person’s profile with Apollo, accessible to all Apollo customers.
For example, any other Apollo customer can search something like “email addresses for decision makers at Example, Inc.” and get back a list including your email address (if you told BrowserStack you are a decision maker at Example, Inc.)
Every single marketing team is doing all of this, the only reason it was obvious in this case is that the OP used a unique email address for BrowserStack. If you sign up for any business product online, you surely have a profile in Apollo filled with details about you gathered from around the web (and details you submitted).
edit: https://www.apollo.io/privacy-policy/remove opt out link but Apollo are just one of many companies offering this service
Maybe you'd have insight into something that happened to me recently:
I did a search (DDG, Chromium) for an Anker product line that I've been following. Clicked the link to Anker, skimmed, nothing new.
Then shortly I get an email from "Checkmate" with a promo offer.
I don't have an Anker account or whatever, don't recall signing in. I figure it's fingerprinting or cookies, but so far it's never been so overt.
I feel like this is an indicator of something, some sea change. Of needing to squeeze more water from the stone. My phone's been blowing up with spam calls since. I've been mysteriously added to email lists. I'm getting short-code text spam in addition to the regular spam, which when I report to 7726, AT&T basically tells me it's fine, it's paid for.
This may be a ploy to get me to turn the AI features back on in Gmail, but it feels like somewhere, lines have been crossed.
> This may be a ploy to get me to turn the AI features back on in Gmail, but it feels like somewhere, lines have been crossed
Lines have absolutely been crossed and there is no going back without a lot of political will
There are no rules anymore. The internet started it, and AI companies proved it. We're much worse of for it. The social contract is extremely flimsy nowadays
So I'm not disputing this, but I set up a similar scheme to the author almost 8 years ago and conduct 90+% of my online business through the custom emails. Everything from Amazon to small local business.
In that time I have had 'leaks' twice: my State's Fish and Wildlife licensing organ, and GitHub. In both cases I assume it's more that the email ends up being public, not because of something like Apollo.
I guess it's possible that spam is getting filtered before it ever hits my inbox.
Edit: I was responding to the idea of it leading to spam, not that Apollo wasn't collecting information on me.
For those curious: I signed up with Apollo and looked at what they had on me (via the link in the flagged/dead post by fontain). The email address they have is technically correct, but it's a non-current work email. It's still active and I do get a lot of senseless/bizarre business sales inquiries on that address. The phone number they have is wrong and I don't recognize it. They have my LinkedIn byline; it's likely how I was 'found' so quickly, as my username is the same there. I'm listed as cold.
I used to do the same until I got tired of it. The only two leaks I found were United Airlines and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate, who sold my email to the Scott Walker campaign (strongly confirming my suspicions that Republicans use libertarianism as a gateway drug).
As far as you know
[flagged]
I had never heard of Apollo, but I was interested so I followed your link to opt out.
I have had the same work email address for 13 years. I have done lots of hardware and software purchasing in that time, and I am never shy of using my work email to sign up for things and give to account managers etc. It is used on my microsoft SSO, my Dell business account, my slack account etc etc.
After I jumped through all their hoops to opt out, I got this email from them:
"We searched our records with your email: xxx@xxxxxx but could not find any information associated to it in our databases. We will keep your email: xxx@xxxxxx in our suppression list in order not to create any data associated with your email. "
So I guess they might not be as ubiquitous in their data capture as you may have thought? Or they are straight up lying.
Hopefully in the soon future:
5. BrowserStack gets hit by a massive GDPR fine.
6. BrowserStack contests the fine for a couple of years, not paying a euro cent
7. People just remember 'BrowserStack got hit by a massive fine'
8. Everyone carries on with business as usual
And the sad thing is, I can guarantee this thread alone will be great marketing for Apollo and they will gain a pile of new enquiries Monday morning.
Another way these companies get data is they have credits. It costs a credit for a salesperson to enrich the data of someone they're trying to contact. There are 2 ways to gain credits: 1 - cash; 2 - the salesperson installs a plugin in their inbox and it scrapes all contact info in the inbox.
ZoomInfo is the most aggressive about this.
re apollo: inbox scraping is what they're describing here [1]
> Apollo does leverage its large network of over 2 million contributors to improve the scope and accuracy of its database of business contact information and run verification checks that result in a better user experience for its entire customer base. Most of the data we collect from our Apollo users simply forms part of our verification system to check and confirm existing information in the Apollo database.
[1] https://knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/20727684184589...