Screenshot: Pranay Parab
Your public LinkedIn profile contains a lot of junk by default, and LinkedIn prominently displays your activity to strangers. If you’ve liked a few random posts, or commented on anything, you can bet that anyone can easily discover it—the platform even places your activity above your work experience on your public profile.
You can fix this by going to data visibility settings on LinkedIn and clicking Edit your public profile. This will show your public LinkedIn profile, and you can go to the pane on the right-hand side and scroll down to tweak a few things. Start by changing who can see your profile picture. Even changing this from Public to All LinkedIn members should be good enough for most people.
Next, you can scroll down and choose which sections to show or hide on your public profile. Most people would be better off hiding Articles & Activity and the Details sections under your job experience and education. Your connections will still be able to see all of this information, but a quick Google search won’t reveal your entire professional history and achievements.
Once you’ve done that, to back to data visibility settings and click Connections to control who can see your list of connections on LinkedIn and Followers to check who can follow your activity and updates. You should also visit the Representing your organization and interests section to stop LinkedIn from using your name and profile with job postings, sponsored posts, and other unrelated LinkedIn activity.
While you’re at it, stop LinkedIn’s partners from showing you sponsored messages or native ads. You can do this by going to message preferences on LinkedIn and clicking Messages. Click the button below Allow LinkedIn partners to show you Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn? and change it to No.
