How to Protect Your Privacy on Linkedin
We’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to figure out what Facebook is doing with our personal information, but Facebook isn’t the only place where you share a lot of information about yourself. LinkedIn, everyone’s favorite professional networking service, gets a ton of data from you about your career and interests and uses it to sell ads and other services. You should definitely be careful about what information you post to LinkedIn and do your best to restrict the free flow of information that you might consider confidential. Here are some ways to get started.
Turn on two-factor security
We are strong advocates of using 2FA whenever possible. Luckily, LinkedIn makes it easy to set up two-factor authentication for your account. Click the me icon in the upper right corner of your profile, then select Settings & Privacy. In the “Account” section, “Two-Step Verification” is the fifth option down. (If you did not provide your phone number to LinkedIn, you will need to do so.) Click “Change” and follow the instructions to set up the two-factor factor in your account.
Given how much information you naturally add to your LinkedIn, it makes sense to make sure it’s well protected. Double as if you are a LinkedIn Premium subscriber as you provided the site with your credit card.
Stop syncing things
LinkedIn loves … links. The social network is owned by Microsoft, so it can sync with Microsoft Office to help you write your resume in Word. It syncs with vacancies and employers when you share your account via the API (often using the Connect LinkedIn button). It can sync with your Twitter account, so you can post content on both networks.
Here’s the thing: when you connect all of these accounts, they all gain access to some portion of your data, and they all increase the risk of your LinkedIn account being hacked if one of the other services is hacked. While some of these connections can be really useful, most are not worth it. You must opt out of these connections, so remember – if the website prompts you to connect to LinkedIn, just say no.
If you’ve already connected services and want to unbind them, click the me icon in the upper right corner of your profile, then select Settings & Privacy. From there go to “partners and services” and you will find three options; one for managing Microsoft services, one for managing Twitter settings, and one for other “allowed services”. Just click on them and hit “delete” on any accounts you want to deactivate.
Keep LinkedIn away from your contacts
LinkedIn also asks you to sync your contacts and calendar from your phone to help you find your professional network on the site. Users often do this when they create their accounts to quickly find people they know, but forget that by “syncing” the accounts, LinkedIn can and will continue to track your contacts over time.
To de-sync your contacts and calendars, click the My Network tab, then the Connections button on the left side of the window, and you’ll be taken to a large list of everyone you are connected to on LinkedIn. In the upper right corner of the list, there is a small open book icon and text that says “manage synced and imported contacts.”
You are now in a new list that displays all the contacts that you have synced using your phone and address book. As part of cleaning up your contact information. You can delete the entire list or individual contacts. As LinkedIn points out, deleting your sync information for your contacts does not “unsubscribe” or otherwise disconnect you from those contacts on LinkedIn.
To cancel syncing contacts, click Manage Contact Synchronization on the right side of the window. On this screen, you will be able to see all the contact lists and calendars that LinkedIn has synced to, and you can delete them piece by piece or click “delete all” to break all your contacts and calendar links. These are two separate lists, so you will need to separately de-sync your calendars and contacts — clicking the “Delete All” button in the “calendar” will not affect your address books.
Disable targeted ads
Like any social network, LinkedIn wants to serve you targeted ads based on your interests. It learns what interests you by tracking your activity on LinkedIn and the sites you visit after being verified. You cannot actually prevent LinkedIn from tracking you, but you can minimize the number of LinkedIn’s advertising and marketing partners who can see and use it by telling LinkedIn that you do not want your data to be used for personalized advertising.
To turn off personalized ads, click the me icon in the upper right corner of your profile, then select Settings & Privacy.
From there, click on the Ads section and you’ll get a long list of data-related features that you can turn off. I recommend disabling all of them, but especially the first three options: “statistics based on the websites you visit”, “outside of LinkedIn ads” and “profile data for personalization.”
The first two allow LinkedIn to collect and use data from tracking your online activity outside of LinkedIn, and the third allows LinkedIn to use your profile information as part of the advertisements it serves you.
Don’t be Linkedin’s guinea pig
Likewise, LinkedIn shares data from its users in order to share information on trends related to work, job search, and more. You can turn this off by going to the Settings & Privacy menu by clicking on posts. Scroll down to “participate in the study” and click “No”.
If it’s not publicly available, don’t post it
I’ll wrap up this with a general “rule of thumb” for sharing information on LinkedIn. Although it exists to facilitate communication with your trusted colleagues, employers, and job seekers, you should only post information on LinkedIn if you agree that everyone can see it.
Yes, we’re talking about marketing companies and advertisers, but also people you might actually know. LinkedIn shares your data with recruiters and corporate HR professionals, including employees of your current and past employers. It might sound like common sense, but LinkedIn is designed to retrieve information about your personal and professional life. If you share this information, it is always in the best interest of the site, even if it is not necessarily in your best interest.
For example, LinkedIn asks you to let them know if you are “actively” looking for a new job. According to the site, toggling this setting allows the site to more aggressively promote your profile to recruiters. While it can help you find a job, it also plays with fire if you’re already working: the fine print for the feature states that while the site is taking steps to hide your status from your employer, LinkedIn may still share your “looking for a job” “with them.
While a “good LinkedIn experience” may seem important because it is a career-related service, you are probably better off leaving your account partially unfinished or unoptimized than offering more personal information than is necessary to meet your professional networking goals.