LinkedIn is a professional social networking site used by millions of people around the world. While it’s designed to help you connect with other professionals and build your network, it also contains a lot of personal information that you may want to keep private.
Fortunately, LinkedIn provides robust privacy settings that allow you to control what people can see about you and your activity on the platform. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through all the key privacy settings on LinkedIn and how to use them to keep your profile information private.
Overview of LinkedIn Privacy Settings
Here’s a quick overview of the main privacy settings available on LinkedIn that we’ll cover in more detail in this guide:
- Profile visibility settings – Controls who can view your full profile
- Activity broadcasts – Lets you limit sharing of your comments, likes, etc.
- Photo visibility – Controls who can view your profile and background photos
- Share profile edits – Lets you toggle notifications when you update your profile
- Connections – Options to manage who can send you invites and see your contacts
- Job seeking preferences – Controls whether recruiters can see your profile and contact you
- Advertising preferences – Options to limit ad targeting and recommendations
- Data privacy – Review and manage personal data stored by LinkedIn
- Blocking profiles – Steps to block other members on LinkedIn
Adjusting Your LinkedIn Profile Visibility
The most basic privacy setting on LinkedIn is controlling who can view your full profile. By default, your profile is viewable by all LinkedIn members, but you can change this.
Here are the options for profile visibility settings:
- Public: Anyone on LinkedIn can view your full profile.
- Connections only: Only people in your LinkedIn network can view your full profile.
- Connections of connections: Your connections and their connections can view your full profile.
- Only you: Only you can view your full LinkedIn profile.
To adjust your profile visibility on LinkedIn:
- Click on the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage and select Settings & Privacy.
- Next click on Privacy in the left sidebar.
- Under the Profile viewing options, click on the dropdown menu next to Select who can view your profile to change the setting.
- If desired, check the box for Also hide your profile from employers. This prevents recruiters from finding your profile in searches.
- Click Save to apply your new profile visibility setting.
Limiting Activity Broadcasts
By default, anytime you like or comment on a post in LinkedIn or make a connection, it shows up as an activity update broadcast to your network. You can limit these broadcasts to control what your connections see about your activity.
To manage your activity broadcasts:
- Go to Settings & Privacy and click on Privacy.
- Under Activity broadcast, click Edit your preferences.
- For each activity type, choose who you want to share your activity with:
- Your connections only
- Public
- Don’t broadcast
- Click Save to apply your new activity broadcast settings.
Changing Photo Visibility Settings
Your profile and background photos on LinkedIn can reveal personal details you may not want everyone to see. Use the photo visibility settings to control access.
To set photo privacy settings:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Privacy and click Photo visibility.
- For your profile photo, pick who can see it from the dropdown menu.
- For your background photo, choose either Connections only or Only you.
- Click Save changes.
Managing Profile Edit Notifications
When you update your LinkedIn profile, a notification can automatically be sent to your connections by default. Turn this off for more privacy.
To manage profile edit notifications:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Communications.
- Under Share profile edits, uncheck the box for Notify your network.
- Click Save.
With this setting disabled, your profile edits will not create notifications.
Controlling Connections’ Visibility
You can limit which connections are visible on your profile to only those you want to share.
To set connections visibility:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Privacy.
- Under Connections, choose either Your connections only or Only you for Your connections list.
- You can also toggle Allow connections to see your connections list on or off.
- Click Save to apply the new connections visibility settings.
Managing Incoming Connection Requests
By default, any LinkedIn member can send you a connection request. You can limit this to only people who know your email address or disable requests entirely.
To change incoming connection request settings:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Communications.
- Under Incoming invitations, choose from:
- Accept requests without email verification – Accepts any requests (default setting)
- Only accept requests when email is verified – Requires requestor to verify email
- Disable InMail connection requests – Blocks incoming requests
- Click Save.
Limiting Profile Visibility to Recruiters
You can prevent recruiters from contacting you on LinkedIn by limiting profile visibility.
To limit recruiter access:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Job seeking preferences.
- Check the boxes for Disable recruiter invitations and Enable privacy mode.
- Click Save changes.
This will restrict recruiters from viewing your profile or sending messages.
Managing Ad Targeting and Recommendations
LinkedIn uses your profile data to target ads and make suggestions for connections, jobs, interests, etc. Opt out for more privacy.
To limit ad targeting and recommendations:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Advertising preferences.
- Uncheck any data types you don’t want used for ad targeting.
- Turn Personalized ads off.
- Under Personalized recommendations, uncheck any you want to opt out of.
- Click Save.
Reviewing and Managing Your Data
You can view and manage the personal data LinkedIn has collected about you and your activities on the platform.
To review your LinkedIn data:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Data privacy.
- Review the data attached to your account and activity under each category.
- Click Manage your data to download or delete data as desired.
Regularly reviewing and pruning your LinkedIn data helps protect your privacy.
Blocking Profiles
If there are any LinkedIn members you want to restrict from viewing your profile or contacting you, you can proactively block them.
To block a profile:
- Visit the profile you want to block.
- Click the More icon (3 dots) and select Block.
- Confirm you want to block the member.
You can also block someone who messaged you directly from your conversations list.
Conclusion
With LinkedIn’s robust privacy settings, you have many options to take control over the visibility and use of your personal data and activity on the platform.
The key settings to manage include:
- Profile visibility
- Activity broadcasts
- Photo visibility
- Profile edit notifications
- Connections visibility
- Incoming connection requests
- Recruiter profile access
- Ad targeting preferences
- Personal data management
- Blocking other members
Adjusting these LinkedIn privacy controls to your comfort level allows you to maximize the benefits of LinkedIn while limiting your exposure and visibility. Be sure to revisit your privacy settings occasionally to keep them up to date.