LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 740 million members worldwide. As a professional networking site, LinkedIn profiles are visible to a wide audience by default. However, LinkedIn offers users several options to customize their profiles’ visibility settings and restrict who can view their profiles.
With LinkedIn’s privacy settings, you can choose to make your profile visible to your direct connections only, people in your network and their connections, all LinkedIn members, or the public. You can also selectively hide certain profile sections, customize visibility by country, and block specific members. Understanding these settings can help you take control over your professional profile on LinkedIn.
Who can see your LinkedIn profile by default?
By default, your LinkedIn profile and most of its sections are set to be visible to all LinkedIn members, whether they are directly connected to you or not.
This visibility enables your profile to be discovered via search engines and allows anyone on LinkedIn to view your profile when they come across it. Opening up your profile completely is beneficial for networking opportunities and being discoverable to recruiters and new connections on the platform.
However, you may wish to limit visibility in some cases, such as:
- Hiding your LinkedIn profile from current employers and coworkers
- Preventing competitors or sales prospects from viewing your connections or activities
- Maintaining privacy boundaries between personal and professional social networks
Fortunately, LinkedIn provides options to customize exactly who can see your profile and specific sections within it.
How to restrict profile visibility to direct connections only
The easiest way to limit your LinkedIn profile’s visibility is to restrict it to your 1st-degree connections only. Doing this will prevent 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, as well as the wider LinkedIn community, from finding and viewing your profile.
Here are the steps to limit your profile visibility on LinkedIn to your direct connections only:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile and click “View profile” to view your public profile page
- Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button located along the top menu
- On the right rail, click “Customize your public profile settings” under the Privacy & Settings heading
- Under the “Select who can see your profile” heading, choose “Your connections” from the dropdown menu
- Scroll down and click the blue “Save” button at the bottom to apply the setting
Once you save this setting, your profile will only be visible to your 1st-degree connections on LinkedIn moving forward.
Limiting profile visibility by country
In addition to limiting overall visibility, you can also restrict profile views based on geographical location. This setting allows you to exclude your profile from being seen in certain countries.
For example, you may wish to:
- Hide your profile from connections and recruiters in your current country if looking for jobs abroad
- Prevent visibility in a country where your company does not have a presence
- Block countries with privacy concerns or that you will not be travelling to
To limit profile visibility by country:
- From your profile editing page, select “Privacy & Settings”
- Under “Select who can see your profile”, choose “Customize your settings”
- Scroll down to the “Customize visibility by country” section
- Check the box next to “Exclude your profile from being viewed in the selected countries”
- Select countries to exclude from the list below
- Click Save to apply your country exclusions
You can exclude as many or as few countries as makes sense for your needs on LinkedIn.
Hiding your LinkedIn profile from specific members
For even more granular control, LinkedIn allows you to block your profile from being viewed by specific members. This lets you stop a particular person from accessing your profile, while still keeping it public or visible to your other connections.
To block a member from viewing your profile:
- Go to their profile page and click the “More” dropdown menu near the message button
- Select “Block or report” from the menu
- Choose “Block” to confirm blocking them
Once blocked, that member will no longer be able to view your profile or search for you on LinkedIn. You also have the option to report or unblock members if you change your mind later on.
Blocking specific members can be useful if you have privacy or harassment concerns about a particular individual or group being able to view your professional profile and activity.
Customizing visibility of specific profile sections
Beyond your overall profile visibility, you may wish to fine-tune which parts of your profile are visible to your different audiences on LinkedIn.
For example, you could:
- Hide your list of connections from the public
- Obscure your company, education, or background details
- Limit who can see your posts, activity, interests, and other profile sections
To customize visibility for specific profile sections:
- Go to your profile editing page and select “Privacy & Settings”
- Locate the profile section you want to edit (ex: Connections, Company, Education)
- Use the visibility dropdown menu to set who can view each section
- Click Save to apply your customized section visibility
Adjusting section visibility allows you to be selective about which profile elements you share publicly versus keeping private for your direct connections only.
Best practices for limiting your LinkedIn profile visibility
Here are some best practices as you consider adjusting your LinkedIn profile visibility settings:
- Strike a balance between visibility and privacy based on your priorities
- Consider the pros and cons of public versus limited profiles for networking and discoverability
- Customize visibility for individual sections rather than your whole profile if possible
- Review all privacy settings periodically in case default visibility changes
- Use blocking and reporting features judiciously for specific privacy concerns
- Leverage groups or private messages for communicating with connections
- Keep in mind LinkedIn profiles still appear in Google search results
While limiting profile visibility reduces exposure, it can also hamper connecting with new people and opportunities on LinkedIn. Weigh the trade-offs carefully as you customize privacy settings.
Conclusion
LinkedIn provides robust privacy options to restrict your profile visibility if desired, beyond the default public setting. Toggling overall visibility, limiting views by country, blocking members, and customizing individual section settings allow you to control exactly who can view and access your professional profile. Balancing visibility with privacy concerns takes some finesse on LinkedIn. But optimized visibility settings can help you get the most out of LinkedIn while maintaining your personal comfort level when it comes to professional privacy boundaries online.