Can you hide your activity from connections on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million users worldwide. As a professional networking platform, LinkedIn allows you to connect and engage with other professionals in your industry. However, with such a large network, many users wonder if they can hide or limit the information shared with their connections. There are a few ways to adjust your privacy settings and limit how much of your activity is visible to your connections on LinkedIn.

Why would you want to hide your activity?

There are several reasons why you may want to hide some of your activity from your LinkedIn connections:

• Job searching – If you are discreetly looking for a new job, you likely don’t want all of your connections and recruiters to know.
• Limit distractions – Hiding your active status can allow you to avoid distracting messages and focus on your current work.
• Reduce oversharing – Some users prefer to keep their professional connections for career-related purposes only, rather than socializing.
• Maintain privacy – You may not want all your connections viewing everything you do on LinkedIn.

Overall, while LinkedIn is designed for networking and engagement, some users prefer to utilize the platform in a more private manner and limit what others can see.

What types of activity can you hide?

There are a few main types of activity you can hide or limit the visibility of on LinkedIn:

• Active Status – You can hide your active status so connections cannot see when you are online.
• Profile Viewing – You can choose whether your 1st degree connections are notified when you view their profile.
• Groups Activity – Group activity can be hidden in your profile so only you can see the groups you have joined.
• Articles Reading – You can hide articles you have read or liked from your activity feed and profile.
• Job Viewing – You can choose whether recruiters and posters are notified when you look at jobs.
• Search History – You can clear your LinkedIn search history at any time.

So while LinkedIn is designed for open networking, there are settings available to limit visibility and hide certain activities.

How to Limit Your LinkedIn Activity Visibility

If you decide you want to hide some of your LinkedIn activity from your professional connections, here are the key steps to do so:

Turn Off Your Active Status

Your active status displays to your connections when you are online on the LinkedIn website. To hide this:

1. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner.
2. Select “Settings & Privacy”.
3. Choose “Preferences” from the menu.
4. Under “Profile viewing and visibility”, uncheck “Show my public profile viewers that I’m online”.
5. Scroll down and click “Save”.

This will prevent your active status displaying when you are online.

Disable Profile View Notifications

By default, when you look at another user’s profile, they receive a notification that you viewed their profile. To stop this:

1. Go to “Settings & Privacy” then “Preferences”.
2. Under “Profile viewing options”, choose “Your 1st-degree connections are not notified when you view their profile”.
3. Scroll down and click “Save”.

This ensures your connections are not alerted to your profile viewing activity.

Make Your Groups Private

Any groups you join are visible on your profile by default. To hide them:

1. Go to “Settings & Privacy” and select “Profile”.
2. Under “Additional profile settings”, uncheck “Show group memberships on your profile”.
3. Click “Save” to apply the change.

This will remove groups from your profile. Other members can still see you are in the group, but it is now hidden from your profile.

Disable Reading Activity Broadcasts

Whenever you read or like an article on LinkedIn, it can post an update about that activity that your connections will see. To turn this off:

1. Go to “Settings & Privacy” and choose “Preferences”.
2. Under “Sharing profile updates”, uncheck “Share articles, likes and comments”.
3. Scroll down and click “Save”.

This will prevent articles you read or like from broadcasting to your connections.

Turn Off Job View Notifications

When you look at job postings, recruiters and companies can receive a notification by default. To disable this:

1. Go to “Settings & Privacy” then “Job seeking preferences”.
2. Turn the toggle off for “Let employers know you viewed their job”.
3. Click “Save” to apply the change.

This will stop notifications being sent when you view jobs you are interested in.

Clear Your Search History

LinkedIn keeps track of your recent searches. To manually remove these:

1. Click on the search bar to view your recent searches.
2. Click “Clear recent searches” to wipe your search history.

Your search history will now only show searches from that point onwards.

Other Ways to Increase Your Privacy

In addition to limiting your activity broadcasts, there are a few other ways you can increase privacy on LinkedIn:

• Tailor your notifications – Disable notifications for activities you want to keep private.
• Review your contacts – Remove any connections you don’t want viewing your full profile.
• Check visibility settings – Adjust what each level of connection (1st, 2nd & 3rd degree) can see.
• Use anonymous browsing – The LinkedIn mobile app allows you to privately browse profiles.

Experiment with your settings and find an appropriate balance between networking and privacy.

The Limitations of Hiding Your Activity

It is important to note the limitations around hiding your LinkedIn activity:

• Not everything can be hidden – Core profile info and activity like connecting with members will always show.
• Connections can still see some activities – Like your profile views andgroup membership.
• LinkedIn is designed for openness – Opting out of all activity visibility largely defeats the purpose of networking.
• Full privacy requires disconnecting – Deleting your account is the only way to fully hide from other members.

While LinkedIn gives you some control over your activity trail, the platform is fundamentally designed for openness and engagement.

Conclusion

While LinkedIn aims to enable professional networking and engagement, there are times you may wish to limit what your connections can see regarding your activity. Steps like hiding your active status, turning off notifications, and removing activity broadcasts allow you to curate what others observe you doing on LinkedIn. However, the platform’s core purpose is connecting people, so there are limits to the privacy settings available. Finding the right balance for your preferences and goals is important when deciding how much to share versus hide on LinkedIn.

In summary, while you can’t completely hide all your activity on LinkedIn due to its fundamentally open and transparent nature, you do have some options to limit your visibility and increase privacy when needed. Finding the right balance depends on your specific reasons for wanting more privacy versus active networking on the platform.