There is a web site www.zoominfo.com that recently came to our attention. Apparently, this web site takes information about the staff of organizations off web sites and reproduces it in their data base of individuals and organizations which is published on www.zoominfo.com.
Zoominfo extracted copyrighted material from our web site www.TheMeasurementGroup.com about my business partner Lisa Melchior and our company; the bio is incomplete, distorted, and a disservice to Dr. Melchior. They also have a bio on their web site for me (under George Huba), but it is completely wrong, although it is nice to see myself characterized as being 20 years younger than I am, and they also have me working for the American Academy of Nursing (a collaborator of mine, but an organization which has neither been an employer for me nor a direct client of TMG).
I have also been aware -- in the past month or two -- that Google searches for individual professionals often bring you to www.zoominfo.com.
You might want to check and see if they have put a bio up for you, whether it is accurate or not, and whether it infringes on any copyrights held by you or your organization.
A good discussion of zoominfo, the problems with their business model, zoominfo's unwillingness to verify information and take responsibility for their published content, and copyright issues for web content is given at http://www.canvasdreams.co.uk/blog.php?blogurl=webservations&PostID=446.
Once my blood pressure came down, I searched the "paid" portion of zoominfo (using their free one day pass) for information on our company and on me (I apparently have a second listing, G. J. Huba, in addition to George Huba). G. J. Huba has a PhD from BOTH Yale and the University of Michigan (apparently giving me credit for Dr. Melchior's doctoral degree at Michigan) and is on the "Board of Directors" of several organizations which happen to be federally-funded evaluation centers (research grants) of which I was the "director" in the 1990s. The Measurement Group has an extra set of "employees" (a half dozen staff members at the Health Resources and Services Administration, a division of the U.S. government with whom we collaborated 10 years ago when they funded our evaluation centers) and The Measurement Group's identified "competitors" are 15 Universities (such as Harvard, San Diego State, etc.) with whom we collaborate on various projects (gee, do I hope that none of them see this nonsense). The addresses and phone numbers and employee lists and a LOT of other things are wrong for both The Measurement Group and for me.
Get it? Apparently zoominfo does not.
As a "control condition" I searched zoominfo for information on Dr. Peter M. Bentler, a collaborator of mine 25 years ago, the former chair of the UCLA Psychology Department, the author of more than 1000 published papers, and the winner of just about every major award in the field of psychology. If anyone should be "visible" to a search engine, it is Dr. Bentler. Dr. Bentler is listed twice: once as an employee of the Western Psychological Association (because he is or was their President-elect) and once as an employee of the American Psychological Association (because he won an award from them recently). None of his 1000+ papers is listed, nor are any of his honors listed. Nor is Dr. Bentler's doctorate from Stanford listed, nor the fact that he has probably been on the faculty at UCLA for almost 40 years and during that time has held dozens of important professional positions within the field of psychology.
Get it? Apparently zoominfo does not.
A lot of the information given on the zoominfo web site can potentially harm our company, The Measurement Group, and me as an individual professional.
I personally find it distasteful that someone would publish a bio of me (and even worse, a grossly distorted bio of me) on a web site without my permission. I also find it distasteful (and even worse, probably an act in violation of legal statutes) that copyrighted materials from our web site have been taken and reproduced, whether for sale or for free distribution, by another web site in a way that may well transcend the "fair use" provisions of U.S. copyright law.
Get it? Apparently zoominfo does not.
See if you are in their database. I doubt that this will make you happy.
And, don't believe what you read about somebody else on zoominfo or some other similar web site. At least in the case of Dr. Melchior, Dr. Huba, The Measurement Group, and Dr. Bentler (of UCLA) the information given there is grossly inaccurate.
Shame on zoominfo.
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