HubSpot Ideas

jehiguese

Disable automatic contact creation for Conversations

HubSpot auto creates a contact for anyone that emails in - or is cc'd into a reply in conversations. For some customers who manage through support, this will mean a large number of contacts can enter the database. The only way to prevent this at the moment is by setting filtering rules, as all filtered emails do not create contacts. There is a use case from a customer in this post [Hyperlink removed by moderator as it linked to an archived Community post with duplicate information]

 

This is a request to build a "Create contact" rule giving us the option to disable automtically creating contacts for people we communicate with in Conversations.

 

324 Replies
mcraciun
HubSpot Employee

Hi 

 
cdewey22
HubSpot Product Team

Thank you all so much for this feedback and direction! I will be reviewing this with the team and will post an update. We have a few upcoming features that should address some of this pain so I will share in the next couple weeks as we have a more details. Thank you!

MaineWinters
Member

@cdewey22 Thanks for addressing, I really appreciate you taking this seriously. 

kbkbkbkb
Member

Thanks for taking this seriously too

Millerd
Member

Thank you I appreciate it

 

Please can you communicate the key importance of this amendment

 

Whilst there have been some complex requests for amendment here I would like to ask that you start with the easiest, simply have a single option which allows the user to add new mail conversations to the DB, would involve a very simple lookup to the DB to see if the email exists if not then not to add it !

 

Thanks again.

mark8
Member

So I see people have been asking for this since August 2018 and still the issue remains.......

 

Effective.......

Muser
Member

This issue has gone on way too long. Additionally, we've spoken with privacy attorneys and they advise us this creates significant legal exposure under laws like GDPR and California's CCPA. When our employees, by the simple act of sending an email, it creates legal exposure to us for processing data in a way not intended/expected by the receipient nor for a legitimate purpose. Hubspot may claim these people are giving consent or there's a legitimate purpose, but when these contacts are being automatically created by employees simply sending emails (including cc'ing to a group), there is real exposure for all of us that senders (or participants on a string) did not intend to have their contact info in Hubspot, and no legitimate purpose in automatically creating a record/dossier on someone just because they were on an email string with an employee of our companies. 

 

Hubspot's unwillingness to offer a toggle to disable "auto-creation of accounts" creates significant exposure for all its customers, and the only possible reason for refusing to add this feature, is that Hubspot makes money off the number of contacts we have in the database, and auto-creation of accounts dramatically increases the contact count, costing us money and making Hubspot lots of money. Hubspot, please do the right thing and give us this feature.

Millerd
Member

All good point, can I encourage HS users to continue to post to this thread such that some "change log" process can be motivated to have this major issue resolved.

 

There is realy no good reason for this function to not be incorporated.

 

In addition any comment back from HS would be welcome !

NCO
Top Contributor

@Muser & @Millerd 

You're both spot on here - this is something that has taken an unfortunately long time to address and the fact that it's directly tied to Hubspot's pricing structure makes it that much worse.

While I'm not holding my breath, @cdewey22 did chime in a few weeks ago to let us know that the team will be reviewing this internally and that they have a few upcoming features that will begin to address this.

 

I agree - keeping up the momentum on this thread is important because this is something that needs to be addressed.

meisag
Member

Hi Everyone, 

 

I am also having the same issue of our own company contacts and spam being added into the CRM. I came here to upvote the idea and to state that it is tedioius to have to manually go in an delete these records daily so that it is not bogging down what the sales team is seeing. 

 

Hope we have a solution to filter out our own company contact soon!

Sirhub
Member

I tried to use this workaround for instapage notifications. However now it seems that the integration is not working properly anymore and submitted form contacts are not added to the list they are supposed to be added to.

Millerd
Member

If you are reading this post, please login and add any comment to try motivate a change here.

 

Thanks

Muser
Member

You missed one key use case. For those companies interested in complying with GDPR and CCPA and avoiding significant legal risk, this issue creates significant exposure.

 

Email strings often have contacts who have in no way given consent to our company to process and store their data in our CRM, and when it's storage is done passively by an employee who forgets to uncheck the tracking box, there's an argument there was no intent to store and a risk of lack of legitimate purpose. 

 

And beyond the legal exposure under privacy laws, it adds further exposure with employment law, HIPAA, and other laws when conversations with outside HR consultants, lawyers, etc. are automatically logged and visible to everyone...until someone remembers to uncheck the box or specifically block those email addresses and domains. That's a huge burden on all of us, and so far, it seems the only reason not to offer this feature is that it would lower the revenue Hubspot makes from all these contacts piling up in the database.

 

The feature is a simple toggle that disables "Automatic Contact Creation from Logged Emails." 

Millerd
Member

Totally agree, I can only hope that this thread motivates a change

 

Keep on posting

ConceptCoJack
Member

Can't believe there are multiple threads on this topic that span over the course of years, and it's yet to be addressed. 

harveykay
Member

@cdewey22 We just started our Hubspot account, and our problem is definitely  more about the auto creating contacts. We have had 1 user using hubspot for 3 weeks, and it is already a huge problem for us.

Millerd
Member

Can anyone at Hubspot please provide a response on this ?

 

I will contact support today and only suggest participants to this thread do the same.

Hatchman
Participant

It is startling that the company should be so unresponsive.   I'm beginning to wonder if this idea section is really about providing platitudes rather than solutions.   Or is this arrogance?  Do you feel you are so secure that you can ignore the customer and only deploy solutions and enhancements that generate Hubspot more income?

Come on guys.  You have a great product with a few major holes that are clear to anyone who uses the product for a short time.   Own up to it and articulate a vision to your customers with what you are going to do about it.  In the end, you want us to be advocates for your product.  What better way to achieve that than by delighting us your current customer base.

krs360
Participant

Hello all,

 

Is there an update to this or a wildcard that I can add to the non-conversion list? The link in the solution isn't accessible to me? It's either been removed or I lack the permissions to see it.

Millerd
Member

No update as yet, however I did log a seperate HS support ticket and HS plans to provide formal response shortly. We are all in urgent need to have this fix created, hopefully more posts here will motivate this.