Your LinkedIn profile is available to everyone registered on LinkedIn but you can limit what information you show to people. I have been using LinkedIn for years and have only ever had people I know ask me to help them with an introduction, however, if you are worried about getting unsolicited communications, you can state in your public profile that you only accept connections from people you know .
- If you receive an invitation you didn’t expect, or from someone you don’t recognise, check the sender’s profile and ask them how they know you and flag them to follow if you’re still unsure.
- If you know an invitation is spam you can reject it. (If a persistent spammer tries more than five times, they are barred from contacting you until they can provide a higher level of qualification.)
- You can set ‘Name and Location’ so only people you are connected to you will see your full first and last name, but others will see only your first name and last initial.
- You can use LinkedIn’s ‘Who’s viewed my profile’ feature to check which individuals have read your profile details.
- When you enable your Public Profile it has LinkedIn’s default settings. Adjust these by deselecting the relevant fields [Edit Public Profile Settings] which is up on the right of the profile page.
- You can also make your LinkedIn status message and profile photo available to your connections only, your network or everyone . Personally, if you are like me, having a photo really helps remembering some people I haven’t seen in a while, so I’d recommend keeping that showing at all costs.
One tip is to check your LinkedIn profile on another computer or browser so you can see what it looks like when you are logged off.