LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 850 million members worldwide. As a social media platform focused on career networking and business connections, LinkedIn provides users with opportunities to create professional profiles, connect with colleagues and peers, join industry groups, and search for jobs. One of LinkedIn’s key features is the ability to view other members’ profiles to learn about their work histories, skills, and accomplishments. However, a common question is whether LinkedIn Premium account holders can see who views their profile even if the viewer’s own profile visibility is limited.
What is LinkedIn Premium?
LinkedIn Premium is LinkedIn’s paid subscription service that provides members with additional features and services beyond the free basic account. Some key benefits of LinkedIn Premium include:
- Seeing who viewed your profile and ability to filter by company or industry
- Unlocking details about LinkedIn page visitors like seniority, location, and industry
- InMail messages to contact members outside your network
- Ability to take online courses and access LinkedIn Learning video tutorials
- Expanded search filters when looking for jobs
LinkedIn currently offers three tiers of paid Premium subscriptions: Premium Career, Premium Business, and Premium Sales. The higher-level Premium subscriptions provide greater analytics on profile views and visitor details.
LinkedIn Privacy Settings
On LinkedIn, members can control the visibility and discoverability of their own profile through privacy settings. Important privacy options include:
- Profile viewing options – Choice of letting your connections see your profile views, letting all LinkedIn members see, or keeping it private.
- Profile visibility – Ability to exclude your profile from search engines and limit visibility to only people in your network.
- Activity broadcasts – Option to turn sharing notifications on or off when you like/comment on posts.
These settings allow you to limit the availability of your profile and activity to other LinkedIn members. However, Premium account holders may still have additional visibility into some non-public information.
Can Premium Members See Your Profile Views?
The short answer is yes, Premium subscribers can potentially identify anonymous visitors to their LinkedIn profile, even if the viewer has limited their own profile visibility.
Specifically, LinkedIn Premium provides the option to “See who’s viewed your profile” under profile analytics. This shows aggregate data on how many times the profile was viewed, as well as details on some viewers like name, title, company, industry, seniority level, and location.
While LinkedIn states that totally anonymous profile viewing is supported if the viewer turned on that privacy setting, Premium members can still potentially see some information about their visitors that could help identify them.
Key Factors Determining Visitor Visibility
Whether a Premium user can identify an anonymous viewer of their profile depends on a few factors:
- Level of LinkedIn Premium service – Higher tiers like Premium Career provide more visitor analytics
- Visitor’s profile settings – Totally anonymous viewing limits visibility but some data may be visible
- Whether visitor is logged into a LinkedIn account while viewing – Incognito mode may limit tracking
- Any existing connections or shared networks between the viewer and profile owner
In general, the more visibility settings a viewer has enabled, the more opportunity a Premium account holder has to identify the anonymous viewer through collected metadata.
Strategies to View LinkedIn Profiles Anonymously
If you want to browse LinkedIn profiles without account holders receiving notifications or identifying you, here are some tips:
- Turn on anonymous profile viewing in your LinkedIn settings
- Use private/incognito browsing when viewing profiles
- Consider limiting your own profile visibility to exclude search engines
- Be aware that company, industry, seniority data may still be visible
- View profiles of users outside your network and without shared connections
While Premium subscribers have increased analytics, you can take steps to limit exposure when viewing LinkedIn profiles anonymously.
Does LinkedIn Notify on Profile Views?
LinkedIn does not proactively notify members when their profile has been viewed by someone else on the platform. However, under the “Who’s viewed your profile” section, Premium subscribers can actively check this data to see how many times their profile has been viewed and some details on visitors.
Some key points on LinkedIn profile view notifications:
- Free account holders do not have access to data on who viewed their profile
- Premium account required to see profile view analytics
- No proactive notifications are sent to users about profile views
- Profile owner must manually check view data for latest details
- Views only show up if viewer is logged into a LinkedIn account
So while LinkedIn doesn’t automatically alert you when someone views your profile, Premium users can dig into the data to identify anonymous profile visitors if they actively check.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn Premium account holders have increased ability to see who viewed their profiles through visitor analytics provided in those paid services. However, members who limit their profile visibility settings and browse anonymously can reduce the visibility of their activity. While Premium users may still see some metadata about anonymous visitors, the most cautious viewers can take steps to obscure their identity when viewing LinkedIn profiles.