The Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice weighs in at 8,668 words.
Source: 🛜 Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice
Source: 📥 Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice — Captured March 22, 2026
Note: 📒 Screenshots 💁🏻♀️ in this chapter were captured on March 22, 2026.
Covert and Dubious Consent
Follow Up Boss
Follow Up Boss (“FUB”) is a Zillow service offered to real estate professionals. Some of your Personal Data may be collected through FUB as described in the FUB Addendum to this Privacy Notice, which is incorporated into and is a part of this Privacy Notice. If you have a Zillow user account and are a contact in a FUB customer’s account (e.g., if you connect with an agent through one of our sites and that agent uses FUB), your Personal Data collected in FUB after the effective date of this Notice is subject to this Privacy Notice and will be used as described herein.
At word 5,334 of the 8,668-word behemoth is a disclosure: “Personal Data collected in FUB ... will be used as described herein.”
A consumer would have to find the privacy notice link in the footer of Zillow’s website, read 5,334 words into it, and know her professional uses Follow Up Boss.
This is a disclosure into the ether.
Source: 💁🏻♀️ Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice — Follow Up Boss
Blank Check IV
Our disclosure of personal data
We disclose your personal data in the following ways:
Within Zillow Group: We are able to offer the products and services we make available because of the hard work of the entire Zillow Group team. Zillow Group entities may disclose your personal data (all categories set forth in “Our Collection and Use of Personal Data” above) to other Zillow Group entities for purposes and uses that are consistent with this Privacy Notice and applicable law. For example, one part of Zillow might share your personal data with another to ensure that all the people helping in your home journey are working together for you.
Source: 💁🏻♀️ Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice — Disclosure of Personal Data
“The hard work of the entire Zillow Group team” and “For example...” are smokescreens. “For example, in connection with a purchase of assets” would be equally accurate.
I cover this subject in Chapter 3.1.
Connecting Consumer Data
We may share a common account identifier (such as an e-mail address or user ID) or hashed data with our third-party advertising partners to help identify you across devices.
Source: 💁🏻♀️ Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice — Third Party Tracking
A “common account identifier,” such as an email address, is called a natural key. In this context, a natural key is a real-world attribute that uniquely identifies a person.
Phone and Social Security numbers can also be used as common account identifiers.
Phone Numbers — Millennials are the first generation that can have the same phone number their entire lives. Like a Social Security number, it can uniquely identify an individual and connect her data across disparate systems and over decades.
Social Security Number — I explain this in Chapter 3.5 .
One Unfair Trade Practice
Uses of personal data
In addition to the uses identified above, we use the personal data we collect to:
Aggregate information we receive to help understand individual needs, customize our services and offerings, and provide everyone better service;
Conduct research and analytics designed to understand our customer base and improve and grow our business, products, services, and customer experience.
Source: 💁🏻♀️ Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice — Uses of Personal Data
Zillow uses Jean Scott Homes’ IP to “improve and grow our business... and customer experience” without consent or the consideration required for a valid contract.
The “Right to Deletion” Illusion
The Right to Deletion
The right to have us delete the personal data we maintain about you. Please note that these requests will not extend to any copies of personal data about you stored and maintained in our systems by other users, such as a real estate agent using FUB; please contact those users to exercise any rights that may be available to you.
Source: 💁🏻♀️ Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice — The Right to Deletion
Zillow creates an illusory right for consumers to have their personal data deleted. In reality, Zillow makes that impossible.
A consumer asks Zillow to delete all her calls, emails, and text messages. Zillow points her to her real estate professional. The real estate professional is unable to accommodate the request.
Florida Statute 475.5015
Each broker shall preserve at least one legible copy of all books, accounts, and records pertaining to her or his real estate brokerage business for at least 5 years from the date of receipt of any money, fund, deposit, check, or draft entrusted to the broker or, in the event no funds are entrusted to the broker, for at least 5 years from the date of execution by any party of any listing agreement, offer to purchase, rental property management agreement, rental or lease agreement, or any other written or verbal agreement which engages the services of the broker.
Source: 🛜 Florida Statute 475.5015 — Brokerage Business Records
“All books, accounts, and records” include call recordings, transcripts, summaries, notes, text messages, and emails. Any record could contain informed consent to proceed with an offer, details of a negotiation, acceptance of terms, or permission to share contact information.
The Smokescreen
Deleting Text Messages
I was not able to delete text messages in Follow Up Boss, and I could not find a Help Center page that directly addresses deleting them.
How to Delete Emails
Emails can be deleted from lead profiles by admin users. When an email is deleted from Follow Up Boss, there will be no trace of the email within the system. However, the email will still be available in the connected email account.
Source: 🛜 Follow Up Boss Help Center | How to Delete Emails
Source: Follow Up Boss Help Center | How to Delete Emails — Dated “1 year ago,” Captured Aug. 7, 2025 by Archive.org
How can I delete a recorded call?
Call Recordings cannot be deleted, even after turning off the feature. The only way to delete the Call Recording is to delete the lead profile.
Source: 🛜 Follow Up Boss Help Center | Call Recording
Source: Follow Up Boss Help Center | Call Recording — Dated “10 Months Ago,” Captured Aug. 6, 2025 by Archive.org
Can I recall a video text?
No. Texts can not be recalled on the Android or the iOS App, whether or not they have a video attached.
Can I delete a video after I’ve sent the text?
No. You can only delete a video from the text while you are still in preview mode.
Source: 🛜 Follow Up Boss Help Center | Video Texting Overview
Source: Follow Up Boss Help Center | Video Texting Overview — Dated “10 Months Ago,” Captured Oct. 13, 2025 by Archive.org
Deleting a Contact
Deleting contacts in FUB will result in all information on the lead profile being erased from your account. This information cannot be restored in any way once you have confirmed that you would like to delete your contact.
Source: 🛜 Follow Up Boss Help Center | Deleting a Contact
Source: Follow Up Boss Help Center | Deleting a Contact — Dated “7 Months Ago,” Captured Oct. 8, 2025 by Archive.org
The only way a professional can delete all of a consumer’s data in Follow Up Boss is to delete the entire contact record. She risks violation of Fla. Stat. § 475.5015, which requires retention of all records for at least five years. Lastly, the professional would be unable to have that consumer as her customer.
Deleting the contact record from Follow Up Boss does not necessarily delete the record from Zillow’s database. At a minimum, it removes that contact record from that account. “Recycle Bin,” “Time Machine” (macOS backup), and long-term archive storage are analogous to operations built natively into AWS.
The No-Right to Deletion
A consumer tells Zillow to delete her data because she does not want Zillow to have it. Zillow sends the consumer down a rabbit trail to a dead end. Zillow’s Privacy Notice leaves the data and all the intelligence it provides in place, regardless of a consumer’s demands and the best intentions of her professional.
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