How to Stop Seeing Awkward Tinder Dates on LinkedIn
Something strange happened the other day when I checked my LinkedIn profile. In the People You May Know section, I noticed a vaguely familiar face — it was a person I met through online dating. We went on two, maybe , dates almost two years ago, but she was there, having been suggested to me by LinkedIn’s creepy algorithm . If this has ever happened to you, here’s what you can do to stop it.
Of course, it was a little embarrassing to see this person being offered to me, but it worried more than anything else. How did LinkedIn find out? I had a short chat with this person on OkCupid, exchanged numbers, and that’s it! No email exchanges, no social media additions or anything like that. Well, LinkedIn has its own ways. The platform can suggest people to you through a number of sources, including:
- People who share connections with you
- People in your email contact list
- People in your mobile phone’s contact list
- People you searched for on LinkedIn
- People who searched for you on LinkedIn
- People you searched with on Google while your browser was logged into LinkedIn.
These are just a few examples, not to mention the information that LinkedIn shares with third party apps and plugins that use their API. Basically, if you’ve ever joined an online dating site and exchanged numbers (especially if you have a LinkedIn mobile app or used LinkedIn on a mobile browser), exchanged emails, or looked for someone before a date (which is quite common), chances are good that you will see the ghosts of past dates pop up. Unsurprisingly, they explain very little on this on their review page of people you may know . So what can you do to stop this? Few things.
Delete suggestions
First, sign in to your LinkedIn account, go to the People You May Know section on LinkedIn and remove the people you don’t want there. Otherwise, they will just stick around until you do something. Here’s an explanation on how to do it . Once you delete them, they will never come back.
Update your mobile and email contacts
Since LinkedIn will have access to your phone and email contacts, now is a good time to review them and delete old numbers and email addresses that you don’t need to keep. As it turned out, this was my problem. Deep in my phone’s contact list, there was a person that popped up in my People You May Know section and was listed only under the name. Ouch! Be sure to also check your Google contacts page , especially the Frequently Used and Other Contacts tabs. You can also de-sync all your Gmail and Google Calendar contacts on this page .
Change your contacts and visibility settings
You don’t need to sync your contacts for someone to appear in your People You May Know section. If they sync their contacts and you are on this list, they will probably suggest that person as someone you might know. You can stop this by configuring who can see you with your contact information. Sign in to LinkedIn, then go to this page and configure your sync and visibility options:
- Manage who can open your profile to your email address : select Nobody or Grade 2 Links (which requires them to be associated with someone you are already associated with in order to see you and vice versa).
- Manage who can open your profile by phone number : select “Nobody” or “Links of the 2nd degree”. You might even want to completely remove your mobile number from your profile.
Now, even if you ended up in some random person’s contact list because you texted them about your favorite movies and how much you love to travel this time, you won’t pop up in their People You Can know ”and they will not appear in yours.
Disable third party access
Go to your personal settings page, then go to the Advertising tab . Scroll down to the “Third Party Data” section and disable everything. In fact, go through all the settings on this page and consider turning them off. Everything is on by default, so lock your profile according to your preference.
These settings should help you avoid most of the annoying awkwardness in the future, as well as keep you away from the People You May Know sections. But who knows how deeply LinkedIn knows you about you?