Complete privacy is almost impossible to anyone who uses Internet today. Most of us have social profiles on various social media sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and professional networks like LinkedIn. There are numerous success stories from people who gets their dream job through these social media sites. However, we would not want to compromise our privacy for this reason. Unlike Facebook or Google+, controlling our public profile in LinkedIn is really difficult, for the simple reason that the latter is a professional network and not a platform for you to vent too much of your personal stuffs. This article explains the following:
Can you block someone from looking at your LinkedIn Profile? Answer is no, you can’t block another LinkedIn member from looking at your profile. However, you can do the following to control what they see.
Hiding Public Version of LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn Public profile appears when someone search you in Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc. In one way, this is good, because your prospect employer can find your LinkedIn profile and may lead to your hiring. But this may not be fun if someone you just met in a club or a pub do a search and find everything about you! LinkedIn allows its users to have the following control over the profile
- Hide your Public Profile Completely (Your profile never appears in Google, Yahoo!, etc. search engines
- Show only basics details like name, industry you working in, location and number of recommendations
- Hide your picture, current employer details, previous employer details, etc.
- Hide your education, current position, etc.
- Hide your profile Summary, Languages, Certifications, etc.
- Make everything visible to everyone
To completely hide your LinkedIn public profile:
After logging into your LinkedIn account, Copy & past https://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?editwp to your browser. Selecting “Make my public profile visible to no one” blocks your public profile from all the search engines. It may take several weeks for your profile details to be removed from search results.
To hide partial details in your public profile:
After logging into your LinkedIn account, Copy & past https://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?editwp to your browser. Select “Make my public profile visible to everyone” and then deselect the details that you want to hide.
Groups: Shows all groups you’re part of
Other Privacy Controls in LinkedIn
Before we proceed, here is how you can access the page to make the changes I am going to talk about next:
1. Turn off Activity Broadcasts: Activity Broadcasts let people know when you change your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies. You can completely turn off this option or you can select who can see these broadcasts – either only your Connections, Everyone, Your Network or Only You.
2. Turn on/off Data Sharing with 3rd Party Applications: This option lets you choose whether you want various 3rd party application you are using to access your data.
3. Manage Settings for LinkedIn Plugins in 3rd Party Sites: If you are signed into your LinkedIn and visit websties that uses LinkedIn plugins, some information about your visit to the website is sent to LinkedIn. You can turn this option completely if you don’t want LinkedIn to know your online habits.
4. Prevent LinkedIn or 3rd Party ads Accessing your LinkedIn data: When you click on an ad appearing in LinkedIn or ads provided by LinkedIn in other websites, the advertiser may have access to your data. You can turn off such access to your data by disabling this option.
By making changes to your LinkedIn profile as explained above, you can control what the public can see about you when they Google on you or search using other search engines. Some of those settings explained above also helps you protect your data from advertisers and other 3rd party websites.
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