How to view LinkedIn profiles anonymously
(MoneyWatch) LinkedIn (LNKD) recently has started emphasizing who is viewing your profile -- you might have noticed that you now get regular notifications and summaries when anyone looks you up.
That's handy, I suppose, and as the recipient of such messages it is good intelligence to help you see who is reading up on you and checking you out. But what if you are the person doing the viewing? You might not always want people to know that you are reviewing their profiles.
Thankfully, as Digital Inspiration recently pointed out, LinkedIn makes it very easy to control the level of detail that gets shared when you look at other people's profiles.
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To do it, go to LinkedIn and choose "Settings" under the dropdown for your name in the upper right of the window. Then click "Select what others see when you've viewed their profile."
Now you've got three choices:
Your name and headline. LinkedIn reports your full name, title and company. In other words, there's no ambiguity about who you are.
Anonymous profile characteristics such as industry and title. This option just reports semi-anonymous information such as "media director at XYZ Corp."
You will be totally anonymous. Use this option if you don't want to reveal anything about yourself.
