LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 740 million members worldwide. As a professional social media platform, LinkedIn allows you to build your professional brand, connect with other professionals, join industry groups, and search for jobs. With so much personal and professional information available on LinkedIn, it’s important to understand the various privacy settings so you can control what information is visible to others.
Who can see my LinkedIn profile?
By default, your LinkedIn profile is visible to all LinkedIn members. However, you can change your profile visibility settings to control who can view your full profile. Here are the profile visibility options on LinkedIn:
- Public: Your full profile is visible to anyone on the internet, even non-LinkedIn members.
- All LinkedIn members: Any LinkedIn member can view your full profile. This is the default setting.
- Your connections only: Only people in your LinkedIn network (1st-degree connections) can view your full profile.
- Select connections only: You can customize your settings to only allow a select group of connections to see your full profile.
The Public setting allows the widest visibility and helps with networking and SEO. The Connections only option gives you the most privacy. Choose based on your comfort level of how much personal information you want visible publicly.
Who can see when you view their profile?
By default, when you view someone’s profile on LinkedIn, the other person is notified that you viewed their profile. You can change this in your Privacy & Settings:
- Profile viewing options – Yes: The other person is notified when you view their profile (default setting).
- Profile viewing options – No: Your profile views are private and others are not notified.
Turning off profile view notifications gives you more privacy to browse LinkedIn profiles without others knowing.
Who can see your connections list?
Your list of LinkedIn connections contains all the professionals in your 1st-degree network. You can control who can see your connections list:
- Your connections only: Only people in your network can see your connections.
- All LinkedIn members: Anyone can see who you are connected to.
Keeping your connections visible only to direct connections prevents unnecessary spam connection requests and gives you more control over your network visibility.
Who can see your activity updates and comments?
LinkedIn allows you to post activity updates, articles, photos, comments, and other content. You can control the audience for your activity feed and notifications:
- Public: Anyone can see your activity updates.
- Your Connections only: Only 1st-degree connections see your activity.
Posting updates publicly expands your reach, while limiting to connections only gives you more privacy over who interacts with your activity.
Who can send you LinkedIn invitations?
LinkedIn allows any member to send you an invitation to connect. You can limit who can send you invitations:
- Your connections only: Only people in your network can send invitations.
- All LinkedIn members: Anyone can send you an invite (default).
Restricting LinkedIn invitations to connections only reduces unsolicited outreach from strangers or sales prospects. But it also limits networking opportunities with new professionals.
Who can see your email address?
By default, your email address is not visible anywhere on your LinkedIn profile. You can control whether your connections can see your email address in your profile settings. Options include:
- No one
- Only connections
- All LinkedIn members
Keeping your email address fully private limits spam and unwanted outreach. But allowing connections to see it makes it easier for your network to contact you.
Who can see your last name?
LinkedIn allows you to show your first and last name, or only your first name, on your public profile. You can decide if you want your last name displayed:
- Display full name
- Show first name only
Using your full name makes it easier for others to find and connect with you on LinkedIn. Showing only your first name gives you more privacy and anonymity.
Who can follow you on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn members can follow your profile to receive notifications whenever you post content. You can limit who can follow you:
- Your connections only
- All LinkedIn members (default)
Allowing anyone to follow you increases your reach and audience. But connections only prevents people you don’t know from tracking your activity.
Who can see your posts, articles, photos, and media?
Whenever you publish content on LinkedIn like posts, articles, photos, presentations, or videos, you can control the audience. Options include:
- Public
- Your connections only
- A customized list of connections
Public visibility helps expand your professional brand and thought leadership. But you may want to restrict some content just to your private network.
Should you customize your visibility by section?
LinkedIn allows you to set a different visibility level for each section of your profile like About, Experience, Education, Skills, etc. For example:
- About: Public
- Experience: Connections only
- Education: Connections only
- Skills: Connections only
Customizing visibility this way allows you to share some info widely while keeping other sections private. It gives you granular control over your professional brand.
Should you turn on search engine visibility?
You can control whether LinkedIn profiles show up in search engine results like Google. Options include:
- Yes: Your profile can be indexed by search engines.
- No: Your profile won’t appear in public search engine results.
Turning on search visibility makes it easier for people to find you on LinkedIn through Google searches. But it also means your profile information becomes more public on the open internet.
Conclusion
LinkedIn gives you granular control over your privacy settings. Here are some best practices:
- Profile visibility: Connections only
- Profile viewing off
- Connections visible to connections only
- Activity updates to connections only
- Invitations from connections only
- Email address visible to connections only
- Display full name
- Followers limited to connections
- Customize visibility by section
- Turn off search engine visibility
These settings limit your public visibility while still allowing your network to connect with you. Customize based on your comfort level!
