LinkedIn has become one of the most popular professional social networking sites, with over 740 million members worldwide as of 2021. With its massive user base, LinkedIn profiles have become an invaluable source of information for researching job candidates, networking, and exploring professional opportunities.
A common question for those new to LinkedIn is – can people see who views their profile if you don’t have an account? The short answer is no. Viewing someone’s public LinkedIn profile without logging in does not notify them or show up as a profile view.
How Profile Views Work on LinkedIn
To understand why LinkedIn doesn’t track anonymous profile views, it helps to know how LinkedIn counts profile views from registered members:
- Only 1st degree connections on LinkedIn can see who viewed their profile
- 2nd and 3rd degree connections will not be notified when you view their profile
- You can choose to turn off view notifications in your LinkedIn account settings
- LinkedIn premium account holders can see more data on who viewed their profile
So in summary, the only way for someone to know you viewed their profile is if you are directly connected on LinkedIn. Otherwise, your views remain anonymous.
Viewing Profiles While Not Logged In
When you view a LinkedIn profile in incognito mode or while logged out, LinkedIn has no way to track the profile view back to you. It does not attach any identifying cookies or log your IP address.
Some key points about viewing LinkedIn profiles without an account:
- You can access any public LinkedIn profile without logging in
- The profile owner will not receive any notification that you viewed their profile
- You can browse anonymously without revealing any personal information
- LinkedIn does not know you visited the profile, so it does not show up in analytics
Essentially, LinkedIn treats you like any other anonymous website visitor when not logged into an account. It has no way to link an anonymous profile view back to a specific person.
Exceptions When Viewing Anonymous
There are a couple special cases where LinkedIn may collect some limited data on anonymous profile visitors:
- LinkedIn drops a cookie after you view a profile anonymously. So if you later log into an account, it can tie your views to your account based on the cookie.
- Profile images and other resources may reveal your IP address to LinkedIn when loaded. But this is not tied to a specific account.
However, in general you can browse publicly visible LinkedIn profiles quite anonymously without an account and leave no trace from your perspective.
LinkedIn Profile Settings for Public Visibility
One important caveat is that the profile must be visible to “public” for anonymous viewing. LinkedIn members can configure their profiles to be visible only to logged-in members or 1st degree connections.
If the profile limits visibility like this, you must have a LinkedIn account and be logged in to view the profile. Attempting to view will result in a page telling you to log in to proceed.
Some of the visibility options LinkedIn members can set include:
- Public: Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn
- LinkedIn Members: Only visible when logged into a LinkedIn account
- Connections only: Only 1st degree connections can view the full profile
So in summary, the profile must be fully public to allow anonymous viewing off of LinkedIn. But this is the default setting for most LinkedIn profiles.
Seeing Who Viewed Your Own Profile
As mentioned earlier, the ability to see who viewed your profile depends on your account type:
- Free accounts can only see 1st degree connections who viewed their profile
- Premium Business accounts can see name and title of any LinkedIn member who viewed your profile
- Premium Business Plus and Sales Navigator accounts offer the most detailed viewer analytics
But again, anonymous profile views while not logged in will not show up in your viewer analytics. LinkedIn has no way to track them back to a person or account.
Conclusion
Viewing public profiles on LinkedIn without an account leaves no evidence from the viewer’s perspective. The profile owner will not receive any notification or be able to see the anonymous visit in their viewer analytics.
Essentially, browsing publicly viewable profiles while logged out allows you to research professional contacts completely anonymously. Profiles set visible to “LinkedIn Members Only” or “Connections Only” do require an account to view, however.
So in summary – no, people cannot see if you view their LinkedIn profile if you do not have an account and are not logged in while viewing. You can browse publicly available profiles quite anonymously as an unidentified website visitor.
