How to Change Your LinkedIn Privacy Settings
Have you visited your LinkedIn Privacy settings lately? If you use the popular business-to-business social channel, then you want to make sure your information is getting through to the people you want it to reach. Conversely, there may be data you wish to keep private. With hacking and data theft frequently in the daily news, checking your LinkedIn privacy settings can help ensure that your data is protected.
For any online business, the terms of service, policies, and options can change. In LinkedIn’s case, it was purchased by Microsoft in 2016 for $26.2 billion dollars and new programs were established. Like any other social media channel data privacy is a concern. Unless you are monitoring your profile along with its data and settings, then your privacy may be compromised.
How Do I Change My LinkedIn Password?
Change your social media, financial, and other online accounts often! Changing your LinkedIn password is easy. You will need to know your current password. To change your LinkedIn password, go to the password section of your profile and follow the directions. You only need to enter in a new password and confirm the change using your previous password.
For additional security, enable two-step verification for your account. Go to two-step verification section of your LinkedIn profile. You will need a phone to receive a text verification with a code. Then you will have to enter a verification code the first time you sign with a new device or the LinkedIn mobile app.
Turn Profile Edits & Activity Broadcasts Off
This edit is not so much about privacy and more about being annoying! Before you start editing your LinkedIn Privacy settings, you may want to shut off “Profile edits & Activity Broadcasts.” When this option is on, your network will receive a notification every time you save a profile edit. If you are making many changes to your data, this could get annoying.
Data Privacy and Advertising
One of the biggest privacy encroachments on LinkedIn is the data that is passed along to advertisers and partners. Like most other social media channels, LinkedIn serves interest-based advertising through its platform for third parties. This means companies can advertise to you based on your interactions on the app. Shutting this off won’t stop ads completely. Changing this LinkedIn setting simply blocks the targeted ads.
Change Your Profile Visibility
Did you know non-LinkedIn members may see your profile in web search engines? LinkedIn may show your profile to non-LinkedIn members if you don’t change this setting people who are searching for your name, workplace, or school may see you, even if they don’t use LinkedIn. For some, this is an issue as they do not want to be contacted by anyone not working on business development. Go to the LinkedIn Profile Visibility section to change who sees your profile in internet searches.
LinkedIn Profile Visibility Options Are:
- Make my public profile visible to no one
- Make my public profile visible to everyone
- Basics (required)
- Picture
- Your connections
- Your network
- All LinkedIn Members
- Public
Display Your Active Status
This is a new setting used by LinkedIn to emulate a feature used by Facebook. By default, LinkedIn shows your connections if you are online and active on the LinkedIn app. For me, LinkedIn is not Facebook, and I’m working not looking to socialize! I have this feature turned off for productivity reasons. I don’t need other users to know if and when I’m on LinkedIn or not. To stop showing connections when you are active on LinkedIn or available on mobile, disable your active status to get a little more privacy!
Remove Apps You No Longer Use
There may be apps connected to your LinkedIn account that you no longer use or possibly, you didn’t even realize had access to your account. Apps may have access to your connections, your data, including your email address and phone number.
For example, I use Hootsuite to post to LinkedIn. Therefore, Hootsuite is an authorized app. However, I checked on this section for the sake of writing this blog post and realized I had a quite a few authorized apps accessing my LinkedIn account. For some, I didn’t even know what they were for. Any blog or website that asks you to log in with a social media profile is getting access to that profile. Stick to using just an email address instead.
Authorized apps that access other accounts are a huge privacy concern. If one of them is compromised or unsecured, then that could be used by a hacker to get into your LinkedIn data or other personal information. To check on what apps are authorized to access your account, go to Authorized apps section of your profile and review the settings.
How To Back Up LinkedIn Data
Backup your LinkedIn account in the event your updates cause an error, you delete data on accident, or your LinkedIn account gets hacked. You can also use it as the foundation for a resume to use for employment. To back up your LinkedIn profile go to the member data section and select which type of download you would like – Fast File or Fast File plus other data. The second option takes up to 24 hours to complete.
