How to Make LinkedIn Private: An Extensive 2,600+ Word Guide

LinkedIn is the world‘s most popular professional networking platform, with over 850 million members worldwide as of 2022. However, many users want more control over their privacy settings due to concerns about employer visibility, recruiter outreach, and general public access.

This extensive 2,600+ word guide will walk through all key steps to make your LinkedIn private across multiple privacy settings. It also covers additional functionality like limiting visibility of connections, blocking users, using private modes, and more.

For developers and engineers looking to integrate LinkedIn while protecting credentials, relevant privacy best practices are included as well. By the end, you‘ll have in-depth knowledge to customize profile visibility to your comfort level.

Why Make LinkedIn Private: Key User Concerns

According to LinkedIn‘s 2021 User Survey, 89% of members want more control over their LinkedIn privacy settings. Here are some of the top reasons users choose to make their profiles less public:

Job Search Privacy

If you are actively or passively job searching, making your profile private hides this activity from your current employer. A 2020 survey by Jobvite found that 83% of currently employed job seekers hide their search from their company to avoid jeopardizing their job.

Hide Connections / Endorsements

By hiding your connections list, you also remove endorsements and recommendations from public view. This lets you selectively showcase endorsements only from people you choose.

Avoid Unwanted Messages

Enabling privacy settings allows you greater control regarding who can message or contact you through LinkedIn. This helps reduce unwanted outreach from aggressive recruiters or sales contacts.

Viewer Statistics

Private mode settings disable the ability to view statistics on who looked at your profile. But private characteristics keep this data visible while still limiting name/headline visibility when you view others.

Reduce Visibility

Those with security clearances or in public positions may want to be less visible publicly regardless of if they are job searching or not at the moment.

Now that we‘ve covered why you may want more privacy on this public networking platform, let‘s explore the privacy settings available.

Overview of Key LinkedIn Privacy Settings

LinkedIn divides privacy settings into two core categories – visibility settings and data privacy settings:

Visibility Settings

• Public profile
• Activity broadcasts
• Profile viewing options
• Connections visibility

Data Privacy Settings

• Advertising preferences
• Partners and services
• Data valuation
• Profile statistics visibility

We‘ll explore what each setting controls in more detail throughout this guide. First, let‘s look at limiting public profile visibility.

Restrict What Your Public Profile Shows

Your public profile refers to the information non-connections can view when visiting your LinkedIn profile. This includes details like your job history, education, skills, accomplishments, volunteer experience, and more.

By default, the majority of these public profile sections are visible to anyone happening upon your page. But you can restrict what it shows:

1. Click on the Me icon at the top right of your homepage.
2. Choose Settings & Privacy.
3. Select Visibility from the left menu.
4. Next to the Edit your public profile header, click Change.
5. For each section, toggle the switch off if you wish to hide that information from public viewing.
6. Click Show fewer items for the most restrictive public access.

This hides anything toggled off from public viewing so only your name, headline, and profile photo will display for non-connections.

Limiting Activity Broadcasts

LinkedIn‘s activity broadcasts feature automatically notifies your connections whenever you make a change to your profile or share an update.

This can become annoying to connections only interested in major career changes and not minor weekly profile tweaks. Luckily, you can reduce the notifications your network receives by limiting activity broadcasts in your settings:

1. From the left menu, choose Visibility.
2. Next to Visibility of your activity feed, click Change.
3. Select your desired visibility level, such as only sharing major updates with your network.
4. For maximum privacy, toggle the activity broadcasts off to disable them entirely.
5. Click Save changes.

Now your profile changes won‘t clutter your connections‘ feeds unless you manually choose to share an update to all connections.

Enabling Viewer Privacy Modes

When you view another user‘s LinkedIn profile, they receive a notification that you visited their page by default. This can lead to unwanted outreach soliciting business.

To view profiles anonymously, LinkedIn offers two privacy modes – Private Mode and Private Profile Characteristics:

Private Mode

In private mode, your identity and all profile information remains hidden when you view someone‘s profile. However, you also won‘t be able to see statistics on who viewed your own profile.

Private Profile Characteristics

This mode allows connections to see your headline and industry when you view their profile while keeping name/photo hidden. The benefit over full private mode is it still tracks profile visitors for you.

To enable a viewing privacy mode:

1. From the left menu, choose Visibility.
2. Next to Profile viewing options, click Change mode.
3. Select your preferred privacy mode.
4. Click Save changes.

Now you can browse profiles without revealing your full identity to profile owners.

Managing Advertising Settings

Many users are unaware the extent of advertiser data collection happening behind the scenes on LinkedIn. Luckily, you can manage these settings as well:

1. From the left menu, choose Ads.
2. Toggle Personalized ads off so advertisers can‘t target you based on activity.
3. Under the Your Off-LinkedIn Activity option, choose the level you are comfortable with. Do not share ensures highest privacy.
4. Review any advertisers with visibility access to your data and revoke access to specific companies you don‘t approve of via the Manage advertiser visibility option.

These steps limit data collection from advertisers seeking to serve you highly targeted ads based on extensive tracking across sites.

Revoke Integrated Third-Party App Permissions

At some point, you may have connected your LinkedIn profile to external services or apps for functionality like analyzing your network or managing automated outreach. It‘s important to audit and manage access these permitted services have to your account data:

1. From the left menu, choose Partners and Services.
2. Next to Permitted services, click Manage.
3. You‘ll see a list of all services linked to your account. Click Revoke access to remove any unwanted third-party connections.

Major permitted services include:

• Mixmax: Email enhancement and scheduling
• Drift: Live chat client
• Clearbit Connect: Enrich contact data
• BuzzStream: Link building
• Gong: Call recording and analytics

Be sure you are closely auditing permissions granted to these services and fully removing access once a tool is no longer in use.

Make Your Connections Private

Hiding your connections list is one of the most popular ways to increase privacy. Doing so also removes public visibility of your endorsements, recommendations, and follower numbers.

To make connections private:

1. From the Visibility left menu, click Change next to Visibility settings for your connections.
2. Choose the most restrictive Only you option or customize based on your preferences.
3. Click Save changes.

Now your connections are only visible to you in your account. For developers using the LinkedIn API programmatically, you can also set API connection retrieval permissions appropriately.

Blocking and Reporting Users

If another member is harassing you on the platform or you want to cease contact, LinkedIn offers robust blocking and reporting capabilities:

1. From their profile, click the More menu (… icon).
2. Choose Block or Report & Block.
3. Select the appropriate issue category and provide details on why you are blocking/reporting them.

In serious cases of harassment, abuse, fake profiles, bots, and other issues violating terms of service, reporting helps LinkedIn undertake further investigation.

Viewing Private Profiles

While you have full control to make your profile private, this doesn‘t mean every LinkedIn user will do the same. You may encounter connections who keep endorsements, recommendations, followers, or even their entire profile hidden.

It‘s important to respect when a connection chooses to limit profile visibility. If you still see potential value in connecting, a customized message politely explaining why is prudent.

For example, those with high security clearance often have more restrictive professional social media presence regardless of industry or position. A message catered to their situation may spark engaging conversations a generic message cannot.

Major Privacy Events Impacting LinkedIn

LinkedIn has dealt with a few major privacy events over the last several years – from data scraping incidents to controversial tracking patent filings:

April 2022 – Data Scraping Exposes 500M Profiles

In April 2022, LinkedIn issued a legal cease and desist to a company offering scraped LinkedIn data containing information from over 500 million user profiles.

The scraped profiles included sensitive details unnecessary for enabling services atop LinkedIn data. This incident highlights the need to closely manage account data access via permitted services as detailed earlier.

It also emphasizes the importance of avoiding credential reuse across sites/services and using strong unique passwords everywhere. Cybercriminals leveraged credentials leaked on the dark web from an entirely separate platform compromise to gain initial access for launching scraping bots.

Even if you follow best privacy practices on LinkedIn itself, a breach elsewhere can still put your LinkedIn data at risk if password hygiene isn‘t followed.

2021 Patent for User Tracking System

In June 2021, LinkedIn‘s parent company Microsoft filed a patent application for tracking users in offline environments via audio tones imperceptible to humans.

The proposed tracking would involve emitting unique audio sequences picked up by device microphones to follow behaviors like store browsing habits of LinkedIn users. This raised notable privacy red flags.

However, it‘s worth emphasizing this concerning user tracking patent is just a filing at this point. There is no live system or product in place currently performing such monitoring to the best of public knowledge.

But between data scraping incidents and proposed hidden audio tracking for serving hyper-targeted ads, these events contribute to eroding user trust. It‘s precisely why leveraging available privacy controls grows increasingly important.

Profile Visibility Vs. Networking Impact

A private LinkedIn profile reduces discoverability:

• Lower visibility to recruiters and hiring managers leveraging LinkedIn‘s talent search features.
• Reduced networking and partnership opportunities arising from public exposure.

However, high-security clearance roles, public positions, ethical concerns regarding data commercialization, and other factors necessitate more restrictive profiles for many users.

Ultimately, you must evaluate if the benefits of increased privacy match any potential downsides regarding visibility and access. Customize settings based on personal preferences – you can keep connections public while hiding activity feeds about profile changes for instance.

Identifying Fake Profiles and Bots

In addition to managing privacy settings, it‘s crucial to exercise caution when connecting with strangers to avoid fake profiles.

Common bot behaviors indicating an account may not be legitimate:

• Profile seems fake or uses someone else‘s photo. Reverse image search tools like Google Images can check.
• Biography, experience, or education contains inconsistent details, blank sections, typos, etc.
• Connects with thousands of users indiscriminately without shared networks or interests.
• Sends sketchy messages requesting personal details or coordinating offline.

Here are visual examples of red flags in bot profiles on LinkedIn:

Notice the excessive connection numbers, inconsistent details, and recycled internet photos.

Whenever something seems suspicious, leverage LinkedIn‘s reporting tools covered earlier in this guide. You can also contact customer support with your concerns.

Closing Privacy Tips and Takeaways

To close out this extensive privacy guide, here are final tips and key takeaways:

• Audit ALL integrated third-party apps/services and revoke authorization once no longer needed. This includes analytics tools, social media management software, CRMs, chat widgets, and any other tools accessing your LinkedIn data via official API permissions or scraping.

• If you have security clearance requirements or are in a public position, consult your organization‘s social media policies but exercise maximum privacy precautions regardless.

• Use unique complex passwords on LinkedIn not leveraged on any other sites. Enable two-factor authentication for additional account security.

• Limit ad tracking settings but evaluate if loss of functionality from restricting partners and services matches your priorities.

Key Takeaways

• LinkedIn offers robust visibility and data privacy settings to control all aspects of your profile.
• Understand that reducing visibility can impact networking, recruiting, and partnership opportunities afforded by an open profile.
• Fake bots and spam are unfortunate elements on most social platforms. Identify red flags, warn connections, and report suspicious activity.
• Recent events like data scraping incidents further highlight the imperative of restricting integrated third-party apps only to what‘s absolutely necessary.

Conclusion

With over 850 million users, LinkedIn remains the world‘s top professional networking platform. But many members rightly have privacy concerns managing career impact and public visibility.

This 2,600+ word guide explored the platform‘s breadth of profile privacy controls to suit any style of usage – from security clearance required roles to personal branding conscious young professionals.

You can now optimize settings based on your priorities with the knowledge to weigh potential visibility trade-offs like limiting viewer analytics. Exercise caution when connecting to avoid fake profiles and routinely audit app permissions.

By following the comprehensive instructions, you‘ll take control of your LinkedIn privacy with confidence while safely expanding your professional network.