LinkedIn profiles contain a wealth of personal and professional information that users willingly make public when signing up for the platform. However, how much of that information is truly open and accessible to anyone? Let’s take a closer look at what parts of your LinkedIn presence can be seen by people outside of your direct network.
Publicly Viewable Profile Sections
There are certain sections of your LinkedIn profile that are viewable to anyone, regardless of whether they are connected to you or not. These include:
- Profile photo
- Name
- Headline
- Current position and company
- Location
- Industry
- “About” summary
- Public URL to profile
So any visitors to your LinkedIn profile will be able to see those basic details about you without needing any special access or permissions. This allows people to get a quick snapshot of who you are professionally even if they aren’t connected to you on LinkedIn.
Fully Public Profiles
Some LinkedIn users choose to make their entire profiles completely public. This means that any sections they’ve filled out, including their full work history, education, skills, accomplishments, interests, and more, are visible to anyone online.
Users can toggle their profiles to “public” instead of just visible to their network only. This gives the world full transparency into the user’s professional background and credentials. Many people do this intentionally to use their LinkedIn profiles as interactive resumes or portfolios.
Profile Views and Visitors
LinkedIn does provide users with data on who has visited their profiles. You can see metrics on profile views and visitors within the LinkedIn dashboard. However, the level of detail visible depends on your account type.
With a free account, you can see limited aggregated data on how many times your profile was viewed in a certain timeframe. Paid Premium accounts let you drill down into more specifics on the companies, locations, and seniority levels of visitors.
Search Engine Visibility
Publicly viewable sections of LinkedIn profiles also tend to appear on Google and other search engines. So even people who aren’t on LinkedIn at all can potentially find your basic profile information by searching for you online.
However, LinkedIn does allow you to request removal of your profile from search engine results if desired. You can do this through settings in LinkedIn’s privacy dashboard.
Profile Views of Connections
When viewing the profiles of people within your LinkedIn network, you can generally see a more comprehensive overview. This includes their full work and education history, featured skills, accomplishments, interests, and groups/organizations they are members of.
However, they can always choose to exclude certain sections from their own connections if they desire more privacy and selectivity in what their network sees.
Member-Only Content
While profiles provide a robust professional snapshot, there is also content on LinkedIn that is exclusively available to members who are logged into their accounts. This includes content such as:
- Full profiles of connections outside your network
- Salary data
- Advanced profile filters and searches
- Full job listings
- Sponsored content and ads
- Premium articles and courses
- Premium insights and analytics data
So browsing LinkedIn as an anonymous user will give you only partial access compared to the experience of registered members while logged in. Key functionalities like messaging require an authenticated account.
Private Information
While LinkedIn profiles contain primarily professional rather than personal information, there are still some sections where users can elect to keep data private:
- Email addresses – Can choose to display only to direct connections or keep hidden entirely
- Phone numbers – Can keep hidden from profile
- Birthdate – Can keep hidden from profile
- Address – City and country visible to connections by default but full address can be hidden
- Recommendations – Can elect to have these visible only to connections
So users do have some ability to limit exposure of certain contact details or potentially sensitive information like age and hometown.
Messaging and Notifications
The messaging system on LinkedIn is private and only accessible between connected members. Strangers or anonymous users cannot message you or view any correspondence.
Similarly, notifications about profile views, likes, comments, messages, and other LinkedIn activity are also only visible to the account holder receiving them.
Groups
Participation in LinkedIn Groups is not public by default. Your membership and activity in Groups will only displayed to others members of that same Group.
Some Groups allow public visibility of members. But as a Group member you can always choose to keep your participation private rather than public if preferred.
Advertising and Targeting Data
LinkedIn does collect extensive data on its users for the purposes of generating targeted advertising, suggestions, and other personalized content. However, this information is internal to LinkedIn and not accessible to regular users or profile visitors.
Key types of targeting data LinkedIn may leverage includes your connections, interests, companies viewed, content interactions, and more. But these analytics and insights are proprietary to LinkedIn’s marketing systems.
Other Obscure Profile Settings
There are a few other nuanced LinkedIn profile and visibility settings to be aware of:
- “Looking For” status on Open to Work – Can choose whether to display to network only or publicly
- “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” visibility – Can be set to connections only or public
- Profile photo tagging – Can be limited so only you can add tags
- Activity Broadcasts – Can limit visibility of your comments, likes, etc.
So you have some granular controls to limit visibility of certain types of profile activity and interactions.
Billing and Payment Information
Upgraded LinkedIn Premium accounts require the input of billing details like credit card information. These monetary transactions and payment data are never made public and remain fully private.
No other users have any visibility into your billing details, account status, or payment history on premium products.
Deleted Profiles and Accounts
If you delete your LinkedIn account entirely, your public profile and all its information will also be removed from visibility shortly thereafter. Connections will no longer be able to view your profile.
However, some aggregated analytics data associated with your account may still remain in LinkedIn’s internal databases even after profile deletion.
Conclusion
While LinkedIn profiles do expose a substantial amount of professional information openly, users still have multiple options and settings to limit visibility and keep certain aspects private. Core identity, contact, activity, and messaging data remain fully under your control.
Understanding exactly what parts of your profile are publicly accessible versus connect-only or fully private empowers you to best shape your professional presence and reputation.
