Apollo.io is a B2B sales-intelligence and go-to-market platform operated by ZenLeads, Inc. d/b/a Apollo.io, a private, VC-backed company (Series D, $100M led by Bain Capital Ventures at a $1.6B valuation) founded and led by CEO Tim Zheng. Its own privacy policy states plainly that Apollo 'operates as a registered business-to-business data broker,' collecting and maintaining business contact and firmographic profiles on individuals — sourced from public websites, professional directories, government sources and vetted third-party providers — without those individuals' direct consent, and makes the data available to paying customers for sales, marketing and recruiting. The same policy states, under its CCPA disclosures, that Apollo 'sells personal information in its Contributor Database to customers' and 'shares certain personal information with online advertising partners,' and separately discloses first- and third-party advertising/analytics cookies and session-replay/heatmap tracking on its own site. In 2018, while operating as ZenProspect, the company's prospect database of more than 200 million contact records was stolen in a widely reported breach. No FTC or state-AG order was found in this research.
TRACK RECORD
1 BREACH
[2018-07-23] · BREACH
Have I Been Pwned lists a breach record for Apollo.io: "Apollo".
Approximately 125,929,660 accounts affected, per HIBP.
Exposed: Email addresses, Employers, Geographic locations, Job titles, Names, Phone numbers, Salutations, Social media profiles.
Apollo's privacy policy states that the company 'operates as a registered business-to-business data broker' and 'collect[s] and maintain[s] business contact and firmographic information relating to individuals in their professional or employment capacity,' making that information available to paying customers for sales, marketing and recruiting — regardless of whether the profiled individual is an Apollo user. The same policy discloses that this data is obtained 'from third parties and public sources,' specifically 'publicly accessible websites, professional directories, public regulatory and government sources, and vetted third-party data providers,' in addition to data submitted directly by paying customers about their own contacts.
Apollo's own investor-news page, published under CEO Tim Zheng's byline, states the company raised $100 million in Series D funding led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Sequoia Capital, Tribe Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, at a $1.6 billion valuation.
Apollo's privacy policy identifies the legal operator of the service as 'ZenLeads, Inc. d/b/a Apollo.io,' the entity responsible for the described data collection, use, disclosure and other handling of personal information.
Apollo's CCPA disclosure states directly that Apollo 'sells personal information in its Contributor Database to customers for B2B sales, marketing, and recruiting purposes, and shares certain personal information with online advertising partners,' offering opt-out via a Removal Page or email and honoring Global Privacy Control signals for sale/sharing opt-outs.
In 2018, while operating under the name ZenProspect, Apollo's prospect database — described as containing more than 200 million contact records — was stolen in a data breach, reported contemporaneously by TechCrunch; a Wayback Machine snapshot of the article was used because the live page is now gated behind a bot-verification challenge under the pipeline's user agent.
Apollo's privacy policy discloses use of 'third-party cookies, served by our analytics, advertising, and measurement partners for functionality, performance, analytics, and advertising' on its own website, and separately discloses 'session replay and heatmap tools that record clicks, scrolls, and navigation patterns,' with masking configured for form/payment fields but full capture of navigation behavior.