LinkedIn has become the premier professional networking platform, with over 810 million members worldwide as of April 2022. With so many professionals using LinkedIn to network and search for jobs, it’s understandable that you may want to view someone’s profile anonymously at times. However, LinkedIn has put measures in place to protect their members’ privacy and prevent anonymous viewing. So can you really view someone’s LinkedIn profile without them knowing?
LinkedIn’s Privacy Settings
LinkedIn gives users control over their profiles’ privacy settings. Under Account settings, members can choose between having a public profile that anyone can view, a private profile where you must be a LinkedIn member to view, or an anonymous profile without your name or photo. By default, profiles are set to public.
If someone has a private profile, you must be connected to them as a LinkedIn contact to view the full profile. Otherwise, you will only see limited information like their name, headline, and industry. Anonymous viewing is not possible unless they have a public profile.
LinkedIn Notifications
LinkedIn shows profile visitors to account holders so they are aware of who is viewing their profile. Under the “Who’s viewed your profile” section, LinkedIn provides a list of the members who have recently viewed your profile. This includes anonymous visitors who are signed into a LinkedIn account but not connected to you. Profiles set to public will get notifications of all views.
The profile visitor receives a notification as well, indicating that you visited their profile. So if you try to anonymously view someone’s profile while logged into your LinkedIn account, the profile holder will be notified of your visit. They won’t see your name if you are not connected, but will know an anonymous viewer visited them.
Viewing Profiles in Incognito Mode
You may think that viewing someone’s public LinkedIn profile in an incognito browser or while logged out could allow you to be anonymous. However, LinkedIn seems to have preventative measures for this as well.
When viewing public profiles in incognito mode or while logged out, LinkedIn may still show that an anonymous viewer visited you. Some users have reported seeing notifications of such anonymous visitors even when the profile was viewed incognito. So don’t assume you can be anonymous just by using incognito browsing.
Premium Subscriptions
LinkedIn Premium subscriptions include a feature that allows you to browse member profiles anonymously, without others receiving notifications. However, this is only possible when viewing people outside of your network. If you view the profile of someone you are connected to, they will still be notified despite having a Premium account.
Here are the different viewing options for LinkedIn Premium subscribers:
| Connection Status | View Anonymously? |
|---|---|
| Not connected | Yes |
| Connected | No |
So if you want to browse without notifications, Premium can enable anonymous viewing but only for people outside of your network. It does not override the visibility settings for your existing connections.
3rd Party LinkedIn Viewing Services
Some websites claim to offer anonymous LinkedIn profile viewing services. They aim to get around LinkedIn’s restrictions and allow you to preview profiles without the account holder knowing.
However, it’s unlikely these services actually enable completely anonymous viewing for private profiles. More likely, they are showing you cached or partial information from public profiles. They may also risk banning by improperly accessing LinkedIn users’ accounts or information.
Ethical Concerns
Trying to view someone’s profile without their knowledge also raises some ethical issues. Unless you have a legitimate business need like vetting a job candidate, anonymous viewing could be considered invasive of someone’s privacy. It also goes against LinkedIn’s intentions to give users control over their profiles.
Notification Settings
Keep in mind as a profile viewer, you can adjust your own notification settings in LinkedIn. Under Privacy & Settings, opt to turn off notifications about who views your profile. This means you can browse anonymously to an extent without reciprocity of someone viewing your own profile back.
Turning off notifications means you won’t see who views your profile. The setting does not enable you to browse others completely anonymously, but it can limit potential reciprocity of being viewed back.
Tools with Limited Profile Information
While you likely cannot view someone’s full private profile anonymously, there are some tools that provide limited public information without logging in. For example:
- Clearbit Connect – See name, location, company, job title, and social profiles
- RocketReach – Get contact information based on name and company
- Anymailfinder – Find emails based on name and company info
- Voila Norbert – Preview name, job title, location for public profiles
These tools won’t provide private details or full work experience from LinkedIn profiles. But they can uncover some public profile data or work emails anonymously in certain cases.
Conclusion
Trying to anonymously view private LinkedIn profiles is unlikely to succeed. LinkedIn aims to give users control over their profile visibility and privacy settings. Features like profile viewer notifications also deter anonymous browsing of other members’ profiles.
If you want to browse LinkedIn anonymously, options like Premium subscriptions provide limited visibility into outside networks. For ethical reasons, anonymous viewing should be avoided unless necessary for legitimate business purposes. Public profiles may offer some anonymous visibility of basic information with third-party tools. But expect minimal details without being able to log in or connect as a recognized LinkedIn member.