How to Remove Your Email From B2B Data Providers Like ZoomInfo and Apollo
A plain-English guide to getting your contact information out of the sales databases that power cold outreach, with the official removal link for each one.
If you are getting business emails you never signed up for, the reason is simple: your work email and job title are sitting inside one or more B2B "sales intelligence" databases like ZoomInfo and Apollo, which compile contact details from public sources and sell access to them.
Unsubscribing from one sender only stops that sender. The data is still out there, so the next company that buys a list finds you again. The durable fix is to remove yourself at the source, and this guide shows you how, provider by provider, with the official link for each. It is free and it is your right.
A straight note from us: Pipeline Factory is a go-to-market company. We use tools like these. We are also the first to say that outreach should be relevant, or it should not be sent. We would genuinely rather reach people who want to hear from us than clutter anyone else's inbox, so here is the exact playbook we would use ourselves.
Before you start: what to expect
- Most providers have a self-serve web form. A few only take an email request. Both are covered below.
- You will usually have to verify the email you are removing. They send a confirmation link to that address. This is normal and a good thing: it stops other people from deleting your record.
- Have a few details ready: the business email you want removed, and sometimes your name, company, and LinkedIn profile URL.
- Removal takes anywhere from 24 hours to about 30 days, depending on the provider.
- Data comes back. These databases rebuild themselves from public sources, so your information can reappear months later. It is worth re-checking a couple of times a year. The LinkedIn step near the end of this guide is what cuts off the supply.
Fastest option if you live in California
California residents have a shortcut the rest of us do not. The state runs a free, official, one-request tool that tells hundreds of data brokers to delete your information at once.
California DROP (Delete Request and Opt-out Platform): privacy.ca.gov/drop. One request reaches 600-plus registered data brokers, including ZoomInfo, Apollo, Lusha, People Data Labs, RocketReach, Cognism, Seamless.AI, UpLead, and Clearbit. It is free (the state will never charge you) and requires you to verify California residency.
Timing to know: consumer requests opened January 1, 2026, but brokers are only required to start honoring them on August 1, 2026, and every 45 days after. So a request you file today is queued until August. If you are in California, this is still by far the least work.
Outside California, there is no free official one-stop portal yet. Vermont, Texas, and Oregon publish broker registries, but those are disclosure lists, not delete buttons. So for everyone else, you remove yourself from each provider directly. That is the list below.
Remove yourself, provider by provider
These are the major B2B contact databases and their official removal pages, verified as of July 2026. Open each link, submit your email, and confirm the verification message if they send one.
| Provider | What to do | Official link |
|---|---|---|
| ZoomInfo | Verify your email and request removal. The same request also covers Datanyze, which ZoomInfo owns. | privacyrequest.zoominfo.com/remove/verify |
| Apollo.io | Open the Privacy Center and submit an opt-out request. | apollo.io/company/privacy-center |
| Lusha | Fill out the removal form. Note it lives on Lusha's separate privacy domain. | lushaprivacy.com/removal-form |
| RocketReach | Find your profile and request its removal. | rocketreach.co/remove-profile |
| Seamless.AI | Submit a privacy request, then click the emailed verification link. | preferences.seamless.ai |
| Cognism | Use the data opt-out form (it hands you off to a privacy portal to finish). | cognism.com/data-opt-out |
| People Data Labs | Submit a "Do Not Sell or Share" and deletion request. One of the largest brokers, so do not skip it. | peopledatalabs.com/do-not-sell-or-share |
| Clearbit (now HubSpot) | Clearbit's data is now HubSpot's commercial dataset. Use HubSpot's form and choose to delete your data from that dataset. | hubspot.com/hubspot-privacy-preferences |
| Hunter.io | Claim your email address, then choose to delete your information. | hunter.io/claim |
| ContactOut | Submit the opt-out form and confirm by email. Deletion is usually within 24 hours. | contactout.com/optout |
| UpLead | Submit the opt-out / "Do Not Sell" request. | uplead.com/opt-out-request |
| Kaspr | Remove yourself through Kaspr's privacy portal, or email privacy@kaspr.io. | kaspr.privacy.saymine.io/kaspr |
| Lead411 | Open "Your Privacy Choices" and select "Delete My Personal Information." | lead411.com/your-privacy-choices |
| LeadIQ | Submit the removal request form. | leadiq.com/request-removal |
| Adapt.io | No self-serve form. Email support@adapt.io and ask them to delete your data. You can check whether you are listed first. | adapt.io/check-my-email |
If a link is down or a form will not load, almost every provider also honors a plain email request. Write to their privacy team, usually privacy@[company].com (for example privacy@apollo.io, privacy@rocketreach.co, privacy@hunter.io), say you want your personal information deleted and suppressed, and include the exact email address you want removed.
Cut off the supply: lock down LinkedIn
Many of these databases are built by matching public LinkedIn profiles to email addresses. Two settings make you far harder to scrape in the first place, so your data is less likely to come back after you remove it.
1. Turn off your public profile
Go to Settings & Privacy → Visibility → Edit your public profile, and set "Your profile's public visibility" to Off. This hides you from people who are not signed in to LinkedIn, and over time it also removes you from Google and Bing results. There is no separate "hide from Google" switch; this is the one that does it. Direct link: linkedin.com/public-profile/settings.
One caution: turning this off can make it harder to recover your account if you ever lose access to your login email, so keep your account details safe.
2. Block discovery by email and phone
Go to Settings & Privacy → Visibility → Visibility of your profile & network. Set "Profile discovery using phone number" to Nobody, and "Profile discovery using email address" to 1st-degree connections or Nobody. This stops tools from matching a scraped email or phone number straight back to your profile.
Your rights, briefly
Wherever you live, the law is largely on your side. The GDPR (EU and UK), CCPA and CPRA (California), and PIPEDA (Canada) all give you the right to see the personal information a company holds about you, to have it deleted, and to opt out of it being sold. You do not have to give a reason. If a provider ignores a valid request, you can escalate to the relevant privacy regulator.
If you would rather not do it by hand
Paid services such as DeleteMe, Optery, and Incogni (roughly 8 to 25 US dollars a month) will submit these removals across a hundred or more brokers for you, and re-remove your data when it reappears. They are not free and not official, and coverage varies between services, but they save time if form-filling is not how you want to spend your afternoon.
The short version
- Cold email keeps coming because your details live in shared B2B databases, not because of any one sender.
- Remove yourself at the source using the official links above. It is free and it is your right.
- If you are in California, one DROP request covers most of them at once.
- Lock down LinkedIn so your data is slower to come back.
- Re-check a couple of times a year, because these databases rebuild themselves.
Links verified July 2026. Providers move their forms from time to time. If a link no longer works, search "[provider name] opt out" or email their privacy team directly.
About Pipeline Factory: Pipeline Factory is a go-to-market engineering consultancy that builds targeted outbound systems for B2B teams. We believe the point of good outreach is reaching the right people and leaving everyone else alone. If you landed here from one of our emails and simply want off our list, the unsubscribe link in that email does it instantly, no forms required.