Top 5 LinkedIn Privacy Topics
April Kelly runs our customer support team and hears thousands of questions each week from users. Here she answers five frequently asked questions on privacy that may be on your mind as well. Have more questions. Leave a comment on this post.
1. I found myself when I searched my name on Google. How does that happen?
One of the benefits of having a LinkedIn profile is the ability for you to take control of your online identity, thus making it easier for your public profile to be found by non-LinkedIn members on the Web. By default your publicly searchable profile contains only your name, industry, and region. This is described in our Policy under “Information Sharing”.
In addition, you can turn off the publicly searchable version of your profile by selecting the top option “None (off)”. That will remove your public profile from our site. Your public profile may remain in a search engine cache for a short time until the cache is refreshed.
2. I received an invitation from this person and I do not know them, how did they get my email?
If you publish your email publicly as many bloggers and journalists normally do then the chances of your getting invitations via email multiply. If you have not published your email publicly and are receiving invitations please report that to us or leave a comment.
You can also prevent unwanted invitations from other LinkedIn users whom you do not know well by using our “Invitation Block” feature. This feature blocks invitations from people who are not in your LinkedIn “Other Contacts” address book. Invitations that are blocked will go into the “filtered invitations” section of your LinkedIn InBox. You can periodically look through your blocked list to see if there are any invitations from people, you actually know.
3.How secure is LinkedIn Data?
Our privacy policies are certified and monitored by TRUSTe (www.truste.org), “an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling individuals and organizations to establish trusting relationships based on respect for personal identity and information in the evolving networked world.” I would also encourage you to check out our online privacy policy
4. Is there anyway for other people to find out who my direct connections are?
Only your direct connections can know who your other direct connections are on LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you complete control over your direct connections and we strongly recommend that the best protection is to only connect with people whom you trust to respect your interests.
Your direct connections can see a list of your connections when they view your profile, however you can turn that setting to off by looking for “Connections Browse” within your “Settings“.
Direct connections will never get any contact information for your other connections from LinkedIn, unless they get it directly from the other party. Instead they will have to request an introduction through you, or through some other party, or to obtain contact information (email address, etc.) from somewhere else.
5. I am out of Invitations, how can I get more?
LinkedIn allows users to send out a cumulative maximum of 3000 default invitations over the lifetime of a user. For people who had already exceeded 3000 at the time the limit was put into place, we automatically increased their limit to equal their current cumulative number sent (not including bounced invitations, but including withdrawn invitations).
Hope these answered some of your questions around privacy but if you have more, please let us know, by leaving a comment on the blog.
trackback
http://blog.linkedin.com/2007/08/30/top-5-linkedin/trackback/
Phil Guth August 30th, 2007
I changed my linked in profile from http://www.linkedin.com/in/pguth to http://www.linkedin.com/in/philguth several weeks ago. I notice that my link in Google is still showing “pguth” rather than “philguth”. Will this eventually refresh on Google’s search results?
Thanks,
Phil
Scott Allen August 31st, 2007
Regarding #2, a common problem is that participating in Yahoo! Groups or other email discussion lists typically exposes your email addresses to all the other members, and some people seem to feel that being a member of the same discussion list is sufficient basis for a connection.
The new policies have cut down on that a lot — I used to get 3 or 4 invitations every time I posted on one of the LinkedIn-related Yahoo! Groups, and that’s finally stopped.
Brian Jeff September 1st, 2007
I have found LinkedIn to be effective and professional, and have had no privacy related issues. As a matter of best practice, I have avoided accepting invitations from people I do not know and would recommend others do the same as it helps maintain the quality of the network.
I would like to warn LinkedIn users about a seemingly similar service named Quechup, which has very poor privacy practices. The quechip.com service will automatically and without your express consent or knowledge send an invite to everyone in your outlook or other address. It is a feature that seems similar to LinkedIn where you are given the choice of whom to invite from your address book, but Quechup automatically sends invites to everyone. It looks like it might be similar to linkedin, but it is in fact very different and an example of very poor privacy practices.
If you get an invite to quechup, chances are the person who sent you the invite didn’t even know they were sending it to you. I would recommand against anyone using or joining that service.
Linkedin should be aware as well, because the site tries to model the features of LinkedIn, but actually does something quite insiduous. Quechup has the potential to reduce the level of trust users have in social networking tools/sites across the board.
TOBIE September 1st, 2007
I have receive 5 invitations within 2 months of people I do know, but each time I want to accept these invitations I’m asked for my password (to be sure of the privacy I guess) and then I try to take actions (accept invitations, reply to those who wrote me..) I’m always asked for my password and so on…
and I can’t do anything else, accept invitations, nor reply. I haven’t tried to archieve or to decline because I don’t want them to have false answers.
What shall I do? Can you help me for this problem?
Sebastian September 1st, 2007
Question:
Here is the scenario:
1. My Public profile is turned off. (by choice.)
2. I have Contact A, listed in my network as a connection.
3. Contact A has my identity listed as a contact, in Contact A’s network.
4. Can Contact A’s other connections, view any information related to my profile, assuming that Contact A has enabled the connections browse feature?
5. If Contact A’s connections can view my profile, although my Public profile is turned off, is their a way to prevent a display of my identity ,to the other connections, in Contact A’s network?
Leen Paape September 2nd, 2007
When people send me invitations and when I try to accept them the LinkedIn systems tells me: You are not the intended recipient of this email.
What is wrong and what can I do to resolve the issue?
Raghav Pandit September 2nd, 2007
Dear April
I found my LinkedIn profile on the top result when I searched my name ‘raghav pandit’ on Google. However, it is no longer there now. How does that happen? Can I get it back by increasing traffic on my profile. Is it something related to SEO (search engine optimisation)…?
Looking forward to hear from you.
Regards
Raghav Pandit
Jakub Krasicki September 3rd, 2007
Hi,
A few days ago I asked to close one of my profiles in LinkedIn.Did you make it? I’m still receiving invitation by email and whent I want to connect with the invitator I see info that I’m not intended recipient ,which is not true becouse I’m the proper recipient.
Could you help me with this ?
jakub
Riju September 3rd, 2007
I appear to be getting friend approvals even though I have not requested people to join my profile. Why does this happen? Just because I belong to a certain organisation or hail from a particular educational institute, it does not automatically mean that I want to have everyone on my contact list.
I would like to limit this activity
Mauro September 4th, 2007
Hi,
I’m still receiving invitation by email and when I want to connect with the invitator I see info that I’m not intended recipient ,which is not true because I’m the proper recipient.
Could you help me with this ?
Mauro
Steven Burda, MBA September 4th, 2007
Great post. Thanks.
-Steven Burda
April Kelly September 5th, 2007
I appreciate all of the inquiries to my posting. I wanted to provide you with a couple of updates on key themes that I read.
1. In response to some of the “intended recipient errors”- one area to check is to verify you only have one active LinkedIn account. Sometimes user’s accidently open a second account which can trigger this error. You will want to verify that you are using the right email address when you are logging in and that any subsequent email addresses are consolidated on one LinkedIn account. Lastly, please remember when closing an account you will lose all of the content and connections associated with that account.
2. Regarding the log-in looping issue we are aware of this looping issue and we are working to get this resolved. I do not have an solid solution at this time, but we have had success circumventing this issue through alternative browsers. For the time being, I would recommend using an alternative internet browser. If you do not already have the Mozilla Firefox browser on your PC, it is free and safe to download at http://www.mozilla.com. This browser has been the most helpful with this issue.
Please do not hesitate to contact customer support with residual issues, comments or concerns. We can be reached at: support@linkedin.com.
Kishor Bapat October 1st, 2007
Hi
I searched linkedin with my name and I appear to have 4 profiles.
How do I consolidate them to a single profile?
Sumit October 22nd, 2007
Hi,
When I add a new email address, and send a confirmation message, it is not delivered at the email address added. So, I am not able to confirm a newly added email address.
I am trying to change my primary email address.
Can you help?
Thanks,
Sumit
Mark Cummuta November 5th, 2007
April,
On Sept.5th you noted that you are aware of the looping login problem users were experiencing. I never had this problem until just a week or so ago. All of a sudden, I can no longer get into my LinkedIn account.
Has LinkedIn resolved this problem yet? Using another browser is not an option for the majority of your users, so I hope you have!!!
Jalpa May 6th, 2008
Hi,
I have a url for my name – http://www.linkedin.com/in/jalpadattani
But when I do a google search, I cannot find my name against LinkedIn. All my other friends name appears when I do a google search. How can I do that for myself? Please reply at the earliest.
Thanks,
Jalpa
Hari May 15th, 2008
When people send me invitations and when I try to accept them the LinkedIn systems tells me: You are not the intended recipient of this email.
What is wrong and what can I do to resolve the issue?
Mario Sundar May 21st, 2008
Hi guys,
Please email customer service for any product issues you encounter.
Email: customerservice@linkedin.com
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
The LinkedIn Blog » Blog Archive Quick tips on Security and Privacy « February 10th, 2009
[...] customer service team is asked a lot about. So, I thought it’s time to follow-up April Kelly’s original post on these [...]