LinkedIn is a popular professional social networking platform used by millions of people around the world. On LinkedIn, users have the ability to view other profiles anonymously without the viewed profile being notified. This can be useful for checking out potential clients, partners, or employees without revealing your interest. However, some LinkedIn users want to know who has viewed their profile. This has led to the question – can you see anonymous viewers with LinkedIn Premium?
Can LinkedIn Premium see anonymous profile views?
The short answer is no, LinkedIn Premium cannot see anonymous profile views. LinkedIn’s premium subscriptions – Premium Career and Premium Business – do not give users the ability to see who has anonymously viewed their profile.
LinkedIn does offer profile view insights and analytics through its premium subscriptions, but these only show non-anonymous views. For example, you can see which companies and titles people have who viewed your profile, but you cannot see the identities of those anonymous viewers.
The main benefit of LinkedIn Premium when it comes to views is seeing more context about non-anonymous viewers, as well as getting notified when specific people view your profile multiple times. However, anonymous views remain private even with a premium account.
What information is available with LinkedIn Premium?
While Premium cannot identify anonymous viewers, it does provide additional analytics into who is viewing your profile on LinkedIn. Some of the key viewing insights available through Premium include:
- Seeing which companies and titles frequent viewers have
- Getting notified when the same person views your profile multiple times
- Seeing more profile characteristics of signed-in viewers
- Seeing locations of viewers
- Seeing viewers by seniority level
- Seeing a greater variety of viewers and companies
This allows Premium users to better understand their target audience, network reach, and viewer demographics. It provides useful metrics even without identifying anonymous viewers directly.
Why doesn’t LinkedIn reveal anonymous viewers?
LinkedIn designed the anonymous viewing feature to encourage users to research and view profiles without jeopardizing privacy. Revealing anonymous identities, even to premium users, would undermine the purpose of anonymous browsing.
Some key reasons why LinkedIn will not identify anonymous viewers include:
- It would deter people from viewing profiles, limiting networking opportunities
- It could enable spying or harassment if identities were known
- Anonymous browsing is considered a security and privacy best practice
- Viewing data helps improve LinkedIn’s overall recommendations
- Premium offerings are meant to provide insights, not reveal individuals
While some users understandably want to know exactly who is viewing them, LinkedIn has clearly prioritized privacy and security in its design. Anonymous views are meant to stay private.
What third-party tools claim to reveal anonymous viewers?
While LinkedIn itself does not show anonymous viewers, some third-party services claim they can reveal the identities of anonymous profile visitors. Some examples include:
- WhoViewMe
- VisitBee
- VeiwStalk
- Anonymous Viewer
- Profile Pro
These tools promise to uncover anonymous profile views through various techniques, usually for a fee. However, it’s important to understand LinkedIn does not authorize these services or make anonymous data available to them.
How third-party tools allegedly work
Most tools that claim to ID anonymous LinkedIn viewers use indirect techniques that attempt to match page views with profile scans. Common approaches include:
- Installing tracking pixels on your profile
- Matching pageviews to profile scans via timing
- Using data like IP addresses and geolocation
- Encouraging profile visitors to authenticate via a connected app
In theory, these techniques could make educated guesses at who viewed your profile anonymously. However, there are often accuracy issues, and the practices likely violate LinkedIn’s terms of service.
Limitations and risks
Before using any third-party viewer identification services, it’s important to understand the limitations and potential risks:
- Results may be inaccurate or unreliable
- Techniques likely violate LinkedIn terms and could risk bans
- Users’ own privacy and data may be put at risk
- Services often have monthly fees and upsells
- External tools should not be trusted with login credentials
For these reasons, most LinkedIn experts recommend against using these kinds of services. LinkedIn does not endorse them, and they could potentially compromise accounts or privacy.
What are LinkedIn’s privacy and data policies?
Before attempting to use any third-party viewers tools, it’s important to understand LinkedIn’s own privacy rules and data policies:
- Anonymous data like views is not made accessible to external parties
- LinkedIn’s terms prohibit scraping, unauthorized automation, and security circumventing
- Any service violating user privacy can be subject to litigation
- User privacy and trust regarding data is a high priority for LinkedIn
LinkedIn has strict internal policies and technical measures to protect user data and privacy. Any attempts to identify anonymous viewers via outside tools goes against LinkedIn’s own data policies in most cases.
Is there a way to request anonymous viewer data from LinkedIn?
There is no formal process to request anonymous LinkedIn viewer data from LinkedIn. The company does not provide any mechanism to disclose the identities of anonymous profile visitors.
If you need data for a law enforcement investigation or legal proceedings, you typically must go through formal legal channels like subpoenas or court orders. Standard users and Premium subscribers have no means to request anonymous viewer identities.
Some users have reported success getting aggregate anonymous data restored after an account ban, but identities are still not disclosed. Formal legal requests are the only way to potentially compel identifying anonymous viewer data from LinkedIn.
Could LinkedIn add anonymous viewer visibility in the future?
While LinkedIn could potentially add the ability for Premium subscribers to see anonymous viewers someday, there are no indications this is planned. LinkedIn’s guidance and policies have long emphasized keeping anonymous viewer data private.
However, platforms can change features over time. Some possibilities LinkedIn could consider include:
- Letting users optionally reveal their anonymous views
- Allowing mutual anonymous viewing after surfacing common profile views
- Providing limited anonymous viewer analytics to Premium users
- Letting users control the visibility of their own anonymous views
Implementing any features to reveal anonymous views would likely be controversial though. Overall, LinkedIn is expected to keep anonymous profile viewing anonymous for the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
At this time, there is no official way for even Premium subscribers to see anonymous LinkedIn profile viewers. LinkedIn’s anonymous viewing feature is specifically designed to keep these views private, with various technical measures in place.
Some external services claim they can identify anonymous viewers through unofficial means, but these techniques may violate LinkedIn’s policies. Users should exercise caution with third-party tools making dubious claims about revealing private data.
While LinkedIn could potentially add options to reveal or share anonymous views in the future, protecting privacy is currently the top priority. For now, Premium offers additional analytics for non-anonymous views, but anonymous viewer identities remain hidden.