LinkedIn is one of the world’s largest professional networking platforms, with over 810 million members as of 2022. With so much personal and professional information shared on LinkedIn, an important question arises – does LinkedIn sell user data?
What Data Does LinkedIn Collect?
When you create a LinkedIn profile and use their platform, you provide them with a significant amount of personal data, including:
- Full name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Physical address
- Employer name and history
- Education history
- Skills and endorsements
- Connections to other users
- Groups joined
- Job interests and preferences
- Content engagement data (likes, shares, comments)
Additionally, LinkedIn collects data on how you use their website and app, such as:
- Pages visited
- Links clicked
- Searches performed
- Ads viewed or clicked
- Device and browser information
- IP address and location
This gives LinkedIn access to a rich set of personal, professional, behavioral, and demographic data about their members.
How Does LinkedIn Use This Data?
According to their privacy policy, LinkedIn uses the data they collect for the following purposes:
- Provide and improve their services
- Create user profiles and make recommendations (people you may know, jobs you may be interested in)
- Enable communications between members
- Show relevant advertisements
- Conduct research to improve their offerings
- Develop new services
- Protect the rights and property of LinkedIn and their members
The core functionality of their platform depends on collecting and analyzing user data. Members depend on LinkedIn to maintain accurate professional profiles, suggest relevant connections, and match them with job opportunities suited to their skills and experience.
Does LinkedIn Sell or Share User Data?
LinkedIn states in their privacy policy that they do not sell or share personal member data with third parties without your consent. However, there are some cases where LinkedIn may share your data:
- Affiliates: LinkedIn may share information with business partners or affiliates for purposes such as joint offerings, research, or analytics.
- Service providers: LinkedIn shares data with vendors and service providers to perform services on LinkedIn’s behalf, such as data storage, marketing, customer service, etc.
- Legal processes: LinkedIn may disclose data if required by law, subpoena, or court order.
- Safety and security: User data may be shared when necessary to protect LinkedIn’s rights, users, or property.
- Business transfers: If LinkedIn is involved in a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, etc., they may transfer user data.
While these policies allow some sharing, LinkedIn stresses that they do not sell personal member data to third parties and only provide data to vendors and partners as necessary to operate their platform.
Does LinkedIn Allow Targeted Advertising?
Yes. LinkedIn allows advertisers to target ads based on member data like location, job title, company, interests, and other profile information. Advertisers can also upload their own contact lists to target specific people and track engagement with their ads. LinkedIn states that they do not share identifiable user information directly with advertisers.
Does LinkedIn Allow Data Sharing For Research?
LinkedIn occasionally conducts their own research projects to analyze aggregate platform data and improve their offerings. They may also share aggregated data with universities, research partners, and others to conduct larger studies. According to their privacy policy:
“Any research based on LinkedIn data is only conducted on an aggregate (bulk) and anonymous basis.”
So while LinkedIn may provide anonymized data to researchers, they claim to maintain member privacy by removing personally identifiable information.
Examples of LinkedIn User Data Research
Here are a few examples of studies where LinkedIn has provided aggregated user data for research purposes:
- Stanford Study on Professional Diversity – LinkedIn shared aggregated data on the gender, ethnicity, age, location, and career progression of members to help Stanford researchers study issues of diversity in the workplace.
- Harvard Medical School Collaboration – LinkedIn gave anonymized data from over 467 million profiles to Harvard Medical School to study gender disparities in health care professional’s career paths and inform efforts to close the gender gap.
- MIT Connection Science Research – Researchers from MIT analyzed millions of anonymized LinkedIn connections to study how people build professional networks and how ideas flow through them.
In each case, the researchers only had access to aggregated data, not any private information identifying individual members.
Can Members Opt-Out of Data Sharing?
LinkedIn does give members some ability to limit data sharing. In your account settings, you can:
- Opt out of personalized/targeted ads.
- Limit data shared with 3rd parties.
- Disable partner sharing.
- Opt out of certain cookies.
However, most data collection and sharing is required for LinkedIn to operate their platform and services. Members must agree to their data practices to use LinkedIn.
Does LinkedIn Allow Screen Scraping or Data Downloads?
LinkedIn’s User Agreement prohibits members from scraping, crawling, or downloading data from their platform via automated methods. They state that:
“Use of bots or other automated methods to access the Services is strictly prohibited.”
The only authorized way to export your network data from LinkedIn is to use their Outlook CSV import/export tool, which allows you to extract connections to sync with an Outlook address book.
Has LinkedIn Ever Had a Data Breach?
Yes, LinkedIn has experienced data breaches exposing member information:
- 2012: Over 6.5 million encrypted LinkedIn passwords were leaked and posted online by hackers.
- 2016: 117 million LinkedIn usernames and passwords were sold on the dark web. The data dated back to a 2012 breach.
- 2021: Scraped data for 700 million LinkedIn members was put up for sale on the dark web.
While troubling, LinkedIn maintains that financial and other sensitive information was not compromised. But these incidents illustrate that hackers do illicitly target LinkedIn user data.
LinkedIn Data Privacy Concerns
LinkedIn collecting and sharing member data raises some valid privacy concerns:
- Data profile can reveal sensitive info like health conditions, political views, sexual orientation, etc.
- Partners and advertisers get access to detailed data profiles.
- Targeted ads can feel intrusive and manipulative.
- Anonymized research data can potentially be de-anonymized.
- Scraped public profile data is vulnerable to misuse.
- Mobile app may collect more data than users expect.
While LinkedIn has reasonable data practices compared to some platforms, handing over so much personal data to build a professional profile means sacrificing some privacy.
LinkedIn Privacy Settings
LinkedIn does provide privacy settings allowing members to limit how their profile and activity are visible to others:
- Control profile visibility to public, connections only, or fully private.
- Select what profile sections are shown and who can view them.
- Manage visibility of your connections list.
- Limit notifications and invitations.
- Turn off personalized ads.
- Disable address book uploads.
- Stop sharing browsing data.
Adjusting these settings can help maximize privacy. But some visibility is required for a functional LinkedIn presence.
Is LinkedIn Safe for Users?
While LinkedIn collects expansive data on members and enjoys broad rights to use and share that data, they do appear to take user privacy seriously within the context of operating their platform. Here are a few factors indicating LinkedIn may be safer than some other platforms:
- Detailed privacy policy explaining data practices.
- No evidence LinkedIn sells data for profit like some platforms.
- Allow users control over visibility and data sharing.
- Security teams monitor threats & quickly address issues.
- Legitimate business model focused on recruitment & professional networking rather than maximizing data exploitation for ad revenue.
Of course, any social platform presents risks in terms of visibility, security, and how it impacts behavior. But overall, LinkedIn seems to use and protect user data reasonably well compared to many tech companies.
How LinkedIn Use of Data Benefits Members
While giving any company extensive personal data requires trust, LinkedIn’s data practices do enable them to provide members with a valuable service:
- Accurate, verified professional profiles searchable by recruiters.
- Job recommendations matched to skills, experience & interests.
- Relevant professional news & updates.
- Productivity tools like courses, articles, and targeted ads.
- Ability to expand professional networks and find opportunities.
Data helps power these core functions that make LinkedIn a useful platform for furthering careers and establishing connections.
Is LinkedIn Worth the Privacy Trade-Off?
Ultimately, each user must decide if the professional benefits LinkedIn provides are worth the privacy trade-offs of sharing personal data. Here are some key questions to consider:
- How sensitive is my LinkedIn data? Are there risks if it got exposed?
- Am I comfortable with LinkedIn’s policies on sharing and using data?
- Do I limit my profile info and use privacy settings?
- Does LinkedIn help me achieve my professional networking goals?
For many professionals, especially those in fields like recruiting and business, LinkedIn provides significant advantages that may be worth the data sharing involved. But users should inform themselves and tailor privacy settings accordingly.
Conclusion
LinkedIn does collect expansive personal and professional information on its members. And they do share and make use of that data in variety of manners – including targeted advertising, analytics, and research collaborations. However, while not without risks, LinkedIn so far seems to handle user data responsibly overall. They generally avoid selling data to third parties and have reasonable privacy controls compared to platforms like Facebook or Google. Weighing the pros and cons, many members may decide the career benefits LinkedIn provides are worth the data sharing involved, especially if diligent about privacy settings. But there are valid concerns over data usage that each user must consider carefully.
