Updates to LinkedIn’s Terms of Service

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Update: Our new User Agreement and Privacy Policy are effective as of September 12, 2013.

At LinkedIn, we are committed to putting our members first. This means being open about how we use and protect the data that you entrust with us as a LinkedIn member. With this in mind, we want to take a moment to summarize some of the key changes that are coming to our Terms of Service.

Updated User Agreement

We are updating our User Agreement to make LinkedIn available to students 13 years and older, depending on country. Smart, ambitious students are already thinking about their futures when they step foot into high school - where they want to go to college, what they want to study, where they want to live and work. We want to encourage these students to leverage the insights and connections of the millions of successful professionals on LinkedIn, so they can make the most informed decisions and start their careers off right.

With our launch today of University Pages on LinkedIn, we are providing a new way for schools, students, and alumni to connect, communicate, and explore unique insights about the full range of career possibilities – wherever your educational starting point may be.

As we make LinkedIn available to pre-university students, we are taking steps to safeguard the experience of LinkedIn members under the age of 18, so we are implementing the following measures:

  • LinkedIn members who are minors will have different default settings to limit publicly viewable profile information and unwanted communications
  • Special routing for Customer Support tickets initiated by members under 18
  • We have added a link to our Safety Center and Family Center so that all members can easily find and access information on how to safely use LinkedIn

The minimum age for LinkedIn members will vary by country; in the United States it is 14. In deciding these ages, we worked to ensure that all were in line with existing regulations in each country. Here’s the country and age breakdown:

  • 14 years old: United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia and South Korea
  • 16 years old: Netherlands
  • 18 years old: China
  • 13 years old: All other countries

Updated Privacy Policy

With regards to your personal information, we want to outline a few of the updates to our Privacy Policy below, and clearly show how these changes will affect you.

  • We have shortened the amount of time we store personal or location (IP address) data obtained through our off-site plug-ins (like the LinkedIn Share button) – and we now delete this information as soon as possible (as it comes into our system), and at the most, within seven days.
  • We have updated the privacy policy to cover the data sharing that occurs when you choose to bind your SlideShare and LinkedIn accounts.
  • We have updated the section of the privacy policy that allows what LinkedIn can suggest to you based on the data that you have chosen to upload from your email address books.

These changes will take effect on September 12, 2013. See what the new Terms of Service will look like here: User Agreement and Privacy Policy. For a more concise summary of the changes to our Terms of Service, click here: User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

As always, it’s our goal to make sure members feel informed and empowered with respect to your privacy on LinkedIn.

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