LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 810 million members worldwide. As a social media platform focused on professional networking and career development, LinkedIn enables users to connect with other professionals, search for jobs, share content, and build their professional brands.
With a massive user base, it’s crucial for LinkedIn to have robust privacy settings that allow users to control what information they share and with whom. LinkedIn’s privacy settings allow users to customize their profiles, limit data sharing, manage ad preferences, and more. Understanding these settings is key to managing your professional presence on LinkedIn.
What types of information does LinkedIn collect?
When you create a LinkedIn account and profile, you provide personal information including:
- Name
- Email address
- Job title and work history
- Education
- Photo
- Interests and skills
- Connections
Beyond what you directly provide, LinkedIn also collects:
- Device information like IP address, operating system, and browser type
- Usage data like clicks, views, searches, and other interactions
- Location information if you opt to share it
This data helps LinkedIn provide relevant experiences tailored to you. But it also necessitates privacy controls to limit data gathering and sharing if desired.
Who can see your LinkedIn profile?
By default, your name, photo, current position, and public connections are visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn. The visibility of other profile sections depends on your account type:
LinkedIn Free Account
For free accounts, your profile is public to other LinkedIn members but not search engines like Google. Anyone on LinkedIn can find and view your profile if they have your name or email address.
LinkedIn Premium Account
Premium accounts have full control over profile visibility. You can easily change settings to limit access only to your connections or a customized list. Premium accounts can also fully hide from search engines.
How to customize profile visibility
To edit what’s visible on your profile:
- Go to your profile and click “View profile”
- Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button
- Select the pencil icon next to each section
- Choose who can view it: your connections, all LinkedIn members, or anyone
You can limit visibility for:
- Background photo
- Summary
- Experiences
- Featured posts & articles
- Education
- Skills
- Accomplishments
- Interests
- Groups
- Contact info
For premium accounts, you can also customize visibility by relationship, selecting specific connections to share access with.
Limiting profile visibility from search engines
To prevent your profile from appearing in search engine results like Google, go to your settings and set profile visibility to “Only people on LinkedIn can see your LinkedIn profile.”
This will remove it from indexing. However, any public content you post may still appear in results. To fully remove, limit posts to connections only.
Controlling data sharing with 3rd parties
LinkedIn uses information to personalize ads and offers. To limit data sharing:
- Go to account settings > Advertising preferences
- Toggle off preferences like profile attributes for targeting and profile display for matched audiences
- Save changes
This limits sharing of profile data with advertisers. However, your activity on LinkedIn’s sites and apps may still be used for targeting.
Managing ad preferences
To influence the types of ads shown to you:
- Go to account settings > Advertising preferences
- Under “Interest categories” select categories to opt out of
- Save changes
This will stop ads in those categories but not remove overall ads. Use an ad blocker to limit ads more broadly.
Stopping personalized recommendations
LinkedIn uses your data to customize feeds and recommendations shown to you. To turn these off:
- Go to account settings > Personalization & data
- Toggle off preferences like “Show me recommendations based on my profile”
- Save changes
This limits recommendations based on profile and activity but doesn’t remove them entirely.
Deleting your LinkedIn account
To permanently delete your LinkedIn account:
- Go to account settings > Account management
- Click “Close account”
- Follow prompts to confirm account closure
Closing your account removes your profile and data from view. However, some data may remain in backups or aggregates.
Best practices for managing LinkedIn privacy
To maximize your privacy on LinkedIn:
- Upgrade to a Premium account for full profile control
- Customize visibility settings for each section
- Limit ad data sharing and preferences
- Turn off personalized recommendations
- Use an ad blocker to limit ads
- Review settings regularly for changes
Balancing privacy with sharing enough to build your professional brand can be tricky on LinkedIn. But thankfully the platform provides robust privacy configuration to help manage it.
Conclusion
LinkedIn provides extensive privacy controls to empower users. Key settings enable customized profile visibility, limit data sharing with advertisers, manage ad preferences, turn off personalized recommendations, and even delete your account. Balancing these options with enough sharing to benefit professionally is important. As the largest professional social network, it’s critical LinkedIn enables robust privacy management, and they deliver the tools to do so. With over 810 million users, protecting privacy is essential to fostering trust and engagement on the platform.
Setting | Description | Location |
---|---|---|
Profile visibility | Control what profile sections are visible to your connections, all LinkedIn members, or public | Settings & Privacy > Visibility |
Ad data sharing | Limit sharing of profile data with advertisers | Settings & Privacy > Advertising preferences |
Ad preferences | Select types of ads you want to see more or less of | Settings & Privacy > Advertising preferences |
Personalized recommendations | Turn off tailored suggestions based on your profile and activity | Settings & Privacy > Personalization & data |
Account deletion | Permanently delete your LinkedIn profile and account | Settings & Privacy > Account management |
Key Takeaways
- LinkedIn collects profile, usage, device, location, and other data
- Free accounts have public profiles visible to all members
- Premium accounts can fully customize and limit profile visibility
- Settings control data sharing, ad preferences, recommendations, and account deletion
- Balance privacy controls with enough sharing to benefit professionally
Understanding and managing your LinkedIn privacy settings empowers you to shape your professional brand and presence. With the right configuration, you can maximize the career benefits of LinkedIn while maintaining your desired level of privacy and data control.