How do I limit what connections see on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a great platform for networking and building your professional brand. However, with over 850 million members worldwide, it’s understandable if you don’t necessarily want every connection seeing every detail of your profile.

The good news is LinkedIn gives you control over what different groups can view. You can limit certain information like your connections, interests, and recommendations to just your 1st-degree connections or only people who share the same company or group affiliations.

Limiting Profile Viewing

LinkedIn gives you two main options for limiting full profile viewing:

• Private profile – Limits profile viewing to only your 1st-degree connections
• Public profile – Allows anyone on LinkedIn to view your full profile

With a private profile, 2nd and 3rd-degree connections as well as members outside your network will only see your name, headline, industry, location, and a sample of your top skills.

To set your profile visibility:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button located just below your profile photo and headline
3. Under “Profile Visibility”, choose between “Private to 1st-degree connections” or “Public”
4. Click Save

One thing to note is that some information like your name, headline, and photo will always be public. But a private profile gives you more control over the full details a wider audience can see.

Limiting Connections

You can also limit who can see your connections list completely or specify that only shared connections are visible.

To adjust connections visibility:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click “View profile” to see how your profile appears to others
3. Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button
4. Under the Connections section, adjust visibility using the dropdown menu:
• Your connections are visible to Everyone
• Your connections are visible to Only shared connections
• Your connections are Not visible
5. Click Save

Limiting the visibility of your connections list gives you more control over how much of your network is exposed to the wider LinkedIn community.

Limiting Profile Sections Visibility

In addition to overall profile visibility and connections, you can also configure the viewing settings for individual profile sections like experience, education, skills, interests, etc.

To adjust section visibility:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click “View profile”
3. Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button
4. Scroll down to any section you want to limit
5. Click the sprocket icon next to the section title to open visibility settings
6. Choose between:
• Your [section] is visible to Everyone
• Your [section] is visible to 1st-degree connections
• Your [section] is Not visible
7. Click Save

This allows you to be selective and keep certain profile elements fully private or limited to just people in your direct network if you prefer.

Limiting Recommendations Visibility

Receiving recommendations from coworkers, managers, or clients can enhance your LinkedIn profile. But sometimes you may only want recommendations visible to your 1st-degree connections.

To configure recommendations visibility:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click “View profile”
3. Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button
4. Under the Recommendations section, choose between:
• Your recommendations are visible to 1st-degree connections
• Your recommendations are Not visible
5. Click Save

Restricting recommendations helps control endorsements of your skills and expertise to only people you are directly connected with.

Limiting Featured and Activity Visibility

LinkedIn also gives you control over your Featured and Activity sections, including:

• Featured articles & links
• Your recent posts
• Your shared articles, photos, videos
• Your comments on other posts
• Your likes on other posts
• Story activity and events

You can limit the visibility of all these elements to either your full network or just 1st-degree connections.

To configure featured and activity visibility:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click “View profile”
3. Click the “Edit public profile & URL” button
4. Under the Featured and Activity sections, choose between:
• Your [section] is visible to your network
• Your [section] is visible to 1st-degree connections
5. Click Save

Restricting these sections gives you more privacy over things like social media sharing and engagement.

Limitations

While LinkedIn gives you robust controls to limit profile and activity visibility, a few key things to note:

• Even with a private profile, your public profile photo, name, headline, industry, location, and featured skills will remain visible to anyone.
• Portions of profile sections made private will still be visible, just truncated after a certain preview length.
• Some information will remain fully public like publications, certifications, volunteer experiences, test scores.
• Premium account holders can view full profiles of members outside their network.

So you have effective options as a LinkedIn user, but not full anonymity or privacy.

Customizing Viewing by Profile

Beyond overall profile privacy limits, you can also customize visibility by individual profile connections.

For example, you can:

• Restrict certain sections or recommendations from specific connections
• Promote or demote chosen profiles to limit viewing
• Selectively show and hide profiles from feed updates

These granular options allow control over exposure to different individuals in your network.

Selectively Restricting Profile Sections

To selectively restrict sections for individual connections:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click “View profile”
3. Click the sprocket icon next to any section title
4. Choose “Customize visibility individually”
5. Search for the profile(s) you want to restrict from seeing that section
6. Toggle the viewing permission for that profile on or off
7. Click Save

This lets you limit viewing of education, experience, skills, or any other section to select connections.

Restricting Recommendations by Profile

To customize recommendations visibility:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click “View profile”
3. Hover over the Recommendations section
4. Click the “Manage recommendations” link
5. Click the profile photo of the recommendation you want to restrict
6. Select “Only visible to you”
7. Click Save

This allows you to keep certain recommendations private from individual connections.

Promoting and Demoting Connections

You can control the level of profile access you give connections by promoting or demoting them.

To change a connection’s access level:

1. Go to your connections list
2. Hover over the profile picture of the connection you want to adjust
3. Click the dropdown arrow
4. Choose “Promote to Inner Circle” or “Demote to Outer Circle”

“Inner Circle” connections get broader access to your profile and activity, while “Outer Circle” connections have more limited viewing.

Showing and Hiding From Feed Updates

You can also select which connections receive notifications when you share LinkedIn posts and activity.

To customize feed visibility:

1. Create a new post
2. Click the checkbox next to “Share with”
3. Uncheck connections you want to hide your post from
4. Check connections you want to ensure see your post
5. Click “Post”

This lets you finely target feed sharing to chosen connections.

Conclusion

LinkedIn provides a breadth of options for controlling your profile views and limiting what connections see. While not full privacy, you can:

• Restrict your full profile, connections, sections, and recommendations
• Selectively limit viewing by individual profiles
• Promote and demote connections
• Customize feed sharing

Exercising these controls allows you to share thoughtfully on a platform built around professional networking and opportunities.