[FAQ]

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on LinkedIn’s privacy settings. Sometimes I want to look at someone’s profile – maybe for research, or out of general professional curiosity – but I don’t necessarily want them to get a notification that I’ve viewed it.

Is there a setting I can change in 2025 to make my profile views anonymous or at least less specific? And if I do that, does it affect my ability to see who has viewed my own profile?

Any help on this privacy setting would be much appreciated!

[Jeff Bullas]

You can indeed control what others see when you view their LinkedIn profile by adjusting your “Profile viewing options” within your settings.

To do this, you generally need to navigate to your Settings & Privacy page on LinkedIn. This is usually accessed by clicking your “Me” icon or profile picture in the top navigation bar and selecting “Settings & Privacy” from the menu.

Once you are in the settings area, look for a section typically labelled “Visibility” or “Visibility of your profile & network.” Within that section, you should find an option for “Profile viewing options” or similar phrasing.

LinkedIn usually offers three choices for how you appear to others when you view their profiles. First, the default is your name and headline, which makes you fully visible. Second, you can choose private profile characteristics, where you might appear as something like “Someone in the Marketing industry” or “Manager in the Technology sector.” This offers a degree of anonymity. Third, you can select private mode, where your visit will show up only as an “Anonymous LinkedIn Member,” making you completely invisible.

If you choose to browse in either of the private modes, it is important to understand a key trade-off when using a basic (free) LinkedIn account: you will also lose the ability to see who has viewed your own profile. The “Who’s viewed your profile” feature is typically disabled for free accounts if you are not sharing your own viewing activity.

However, if you have a LinkedIn Premium subscription, you can usually browse in private mode and still retain access to the list of people who have viewed your profile over the past 90 days.

You can change this setting back at any time if you decide you want to see who has viewed your profile again and are comfortable with others seeing when you view theirs (assuming you are on a free account).

So, to browse more privately, adjust your profile viewing options to one of the private modes. Just be aware of the reciprocal effect on seeing your own profile viewers if you are not a Premium subscriber.

Cheers,

Jeff

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