How To Stop New Contacts Seeing All Your LinkedIn Connections
In today’s article I will show you how to add a layer of protection to your contact list when you accept new invitations to connect. At a recent LinkedIn training session I was asked a question about a scenario someone had experienced with a new connection. The new connection was a competitor. They’d accepted the invitation to connect and then decided they didn’t want their competitor to see all of their connections. They then disconnected from this LinkedIn member due to the concern that this new contact could see all of their connections.
The good news is that there’s an easy way to add a degree of protection to your connections in cases like this, where you accept an invitation to connect and don’t want that person to make their way though your connection list (it happens). You can select who can see your connections from your Settings page and I recommend you set it to Only you, as shown in the screenshot below. It is important to note that your 1st-degree connections will always be able to see shared connections.
How to adjust who can see your list of connections
- Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
- Select Settings & Privacy from the dropdown.
- Click the Privacy tab at the top of the page.
- Under the How others see your profile and network information section, click Change next to Who can see your connections.
- Select your preferred visibility setting from the following options:
- Your connections
- Only you
By default, your 1st-degree connections can see your list of connections. LinkedIn also advises that some of your 1st-degree connections may also sync their LinkedIn account to their account on a partner service and see this information there, unless you opted out of profile visibility on partner services.
You may also like to read How to Avoid Spam, Protect Your Data & Improve Your LinkedIn User Experience.
Source: LinkedIn Help
Karen Hollenbach
As the Founding Director of Think Bespoke I help individuals and organisations unlock their potential with LinkedIn. Sign up to my E-insights for LinkedIn tips.