Update: Zoominfo account terminated! See here for details.
A few weeks ago Christine O’Donnell was accused of putting up a linkedin page with... well, an inflated resume would seem like the kind way to put it. She claimed it was fake and Lindedin took it down, without taking a stand on the authorship of the original.
A few weeks ago Christine O’Donnell was accused of putting up a linkedin page with... well, an inflated resume would seem like the kind way to put it. She claimed it was fake and Lindedin took it down, without taking a stand on the authorship of the original.
Then another popped up using Zoominfo, and a lot was made of the fact it was “user verified.” So I wondered, well, just how much went into user verification?
I can tell you the answer, now: pretty much nothing. Take a look, for instance, at this profile for “Mr. Thomas Petty.” Every word of it was written by me (leaving out web references that are automatically gathered). I am not Tom Petty. And it says “user verified.” So the obviously fake profile was allowed to stay up there since September 30 and no one cares.
How did I do it? Simple, I registered, using my AaronJW72@gmail.com address. That's right, I used a name that very obviously was NOT Tom Petty. That’s all the verification they required.
Does it exonerate Christine O’Donnell? Nope. Does it erase other problems? Nope. But it’s one more piece of the puzzle.
Does it exonerate Christine O’Donnell? Nope. Does it erase other problems? Nope. But it’s one more piece of the puzzle.
So Zoominfo, its time to step up. Disclose the email address used to verify this account. If not to us, at least to an appropriately skeptical reporter. [Update: And giving us the IP address would be nice, too.]
Also screen cap after the break, in case Zoominfo decided to disappear this little embarrassment.
Thanks to Patterico for the screencap. For some reason blogger is not letting me load pictures I create, but it is letting me copy from other sites.
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