LinkedIn privacy settings you should change now

Stop LinkedIn from letting connections know it’s your birthday

If you’ve ever gotten unexpected LinkedIn birthday greetings from old colleagues or people you’ve met at conferences, it could be because the professional network told your connections it’s your birthday.

If you find this creepy, the easiest way to stop it is to simply delete your birthday information from LinkedIn — it’s not actually required to use the service. This is most easily done on the web. Go to the Me icon at the top → View Profile → Contact info (in your introduction section) → Edit (the pencil icon) → Birthday and then remove the month and day you see there.

Stop LinkedIn from syncing your contacts

At some point, you may have granted LinkedIn ongoing permission to copy your contacts lists from your phone, Gmail, Outlook or other sources. LinkedIn uses that data to suggest connections and show you updates about your contacts, among other things. But your phone’s contacts list probably isn’t just for work — it may be filled with family, friends or even enemies you don’t want to see on LinkedIn.

To turn off syncing your contacts use this link on the web and tap “Remove all.” Or in the app by tapping on your profile photo → View Profile Settings → Account preferences → Sync contacts or in the app by tapping on your profile photo → View Profile Settings → and make sure it is switched to “Off.”

Stop LinkedIn from broadcasting your profile updates

When you make an edit to your profile, LinkedIn could flag the change to your connections — including your current colleagues or boss, who might wonder why you’re so busy updating your profile.

Turn off the oversharing by going to this link, or in the app by tapping on your profile photo → View Profile Settings → Visibility → Share profile updates with your network → and make sure “Share key profile updates” is set to off. Doing this could mean your connections will miss an update like a promotion — but you could always just turn this back on temporarily for a change you do want to broadcast.