LinkedIn privacy tips: stay findable by the right people, not scrapers and scammers
Data removal. Updated 2026-09-13. About 5 minutes to read.
Set email and phone discovery to Nobody, turn off off-LinkedIn visibility and AI training, and switch off public visibility if you do not need Google to find you.
LinkedIn is different from other social networks because being found is the point. Recruiters, clients and former colleagues need to see you. The trick is to stay visible to signed in members you choose while cutting off search engines, bulk scrapers, AI training and fake recruiters.
Public LinkedIn data gets harvested at scale. In 2021 a dataset advertised as covering about 700 million LinkedIn users was offered for sale. LinkedIn said it was scraped from public profiles and other sources rather than stolen in a breach, which is exactly the point: anything set to public can be collected.
Every path below starts from the Me icon at the top of LinkedIn, then Settings and Privacy. The paths were checked in September 2026 and use the same names in the app.
Decide what LinkedIn is for before you change anything
If you are job hunting or sell services, you need recruiters and prospects to find you, so keep your profile visible to signed in members and restrict the rest. If you only keep LinkedIn for your network, you can go much further and switch off public visibility entirely.
Either way, remove the details nobody needs: a personal phone number, a home suburb or street, your full date of birth, and the exact dates you started roles at small employers. Those details are what turn a professional profile into an identity theft kit.
Control what Google and logged out visitors see
Go to Settings and Privacy, then Visibility, then Edit your public profile.
To disappear from search engines, turn off Your profile's public visibility. Signed in members can still find you on LinkedIn.
To stay listed but show less, keep it on and switch off individual sections such as profile photo, headline, current experience and education.
Replace the numbered profile address with a custom one only if you are happy for it to be public, since a clean address is easier to find and share.
Turning off public visibility does not remove copies already scraped or cached, and search engines can take weeks to drop your page. It also does not hide you from people signed in to LinkedIn.
Stop lookups by email address and phone number
LinkedIn notes that turning off email and phone discovery does not prevent people finding you by name and organisation, and that the off LinkedIn setting does not change your public profile. Each control covers one route only, which is why you set all three.
Go to Settings and Privacy, then Visibility, then Profile discovery using email address, and choose Nobody or 1st degree connections.
Open Profile discovery using phone number and choose Nobody.
Open Profile discovery and visibility off LinkedIn and switch it off. This stops approved partners, such as email and calendar services, showing mini profiles of you to their users.
Hide your contact details, network and activity
Go to Visibility, then Email visibility, and choose Only visible to me or 1st degree connections.
In the same section, set Who can see or download your email address so connections cannot export it.
Open Connections and turn off letting connections see your list. Scammers use visible networks to impersonate colleagues.
Open Profile viewing options and choose Private mode if you do not want people to see that you viewed them. You lose the list of who viewed you unless you pay for Premium.
Open Manage active status and choose No one, and turn off sharing profile updates with your network if you do not want job changes announced.
Opt out of AI training and research use
Go to Settings and Privacy, then Data privacy, then Data for Generative AI Improvement, and turn off Use my data for training content creation AI models.
In Data privacy, open Social, economic and workplace research and switch it off.
Review the advertising data settings in the same area and turn off the ones you do not want, including data shared with affiliates where your region offers the option.
Use Get a copy of your data to see what LinkedIn holds before and after trimming.
From 3 November 2025, LinkedIn extended training of its content generating AI models to member data in the UK, the EU and EEA, Switzerland, Canada and Hong Kong, on by default. Opting out stops future use but does not remove data already used for training.
Spot the fake recruiter and the job scam
A recruiter who moves you to WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal after one message.
An offer after a text chat with no video interview, often with an unusually high salary for simple remote work.
Requests for your driver licence, passport, tax file number or Social Security number before a real offer and contract exist.
Being asked to buy equipment, pay for training, or deposit a cheque and send part of it back.
A company page with few employees, a new website, or an email domain that does not match the company.
A profile without LinkedIn's verification badge claiming to work at a large firm. Verification is free, so its absence on a busy recruiter is worth noticing.
Lock the account itself
Go to Settings and Privacy, then Sign in and security, then Two-step verification, and choose an authenticator app rather than SMS.
In Sign in and security, open Where you are signed in and end sessions you do not recognise.
Check that your primary email is one you still control, and remove old work addresses you can no longer access.
Check your email address against known breaches. The 2012 LinkedIn breach, which surfaced in 2016, exposed about 164 million email addresses and passwords, and those pairs are still used in credential stuffing.
Frequently asked questions
Can I hide my LinkedIn profile from Google search?
Yes. Go to Visibility, then Edit your public profile, and turn off your profile's public visibility. Existing search results take time to disappear, and people signed in to LinkedIn can still find you.
If I use private mode, can people see that I viewed their profile?
No. In private mode they see an anonymous LinkedIn member. The trade off is that you also stop seeing who viewed your profile unless you have Premium.
Does LinkedIn use my posts and profile to train AI?
Unless you opt out, LinkedIn can use your data to train its content generating AI models. Turn off Data for Generative AI Improvement under Data privacy. The change applies going forward only.
Can recruiters still find me if I turn off my public profile?
Yes. Public visibility only affects people who are not signed in and search engines. Recruiters searching inside LinkedIn still find you based on your profile content and your signed in visibility settings.
Does Open to Work recruiters only hide it from my employer?
LinkedIn says it takes steps to hide the recruiters only setting from recruiters at your current company, but it cannot guarantee complete privacy. If your employer finding out would be a problem, do not rely on it.