How to Easily Stay Anonymous on LinkedIn

Sometimes, you just want to remain below the radar. That isn’t always easy to do when you hop onto LinkedIn, but you know it’s possible. You’ve seen the grayed out icon that teased you with this statement: “This member chose to be shown as anonymous” instead of showing the visitor’s name.

How in the world do you take a look at someone’s profile without letting them know you were there? There are a couple of steps you can take to browse LinkedIn without leaving a trace. It’s time to change your settings. Head to “Account and Settings,” then jump down to “Privacy and Settings.” Take a look at the different settings under the header “Privacy.”

Read More: Do Social Networks Respect Your Privacy?

From here, you can change whether or not your profile appears in search engines. Decide who you want to see your connections. Just don’t forget to click the options for “Profile Viewing Options.”

You can select what others see on your LinkedIn profile. If you don’t want to provide full access, and you want to make sure that not just anyone can view your profile photo and title, then choose a different option.

Opt for “Private Profile Characteristics” to include a general version of your title and location. To go completely anonymous, select “Private Mode.” Now, when anyone comes across your profile, it will read “Anonymous LinkedIn Member.”

Just remember that picking either “Private Profile Characteristics” or “Private Mode” will disable the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” function. Your own viewer history will be erased.

For a short term fix that won’t risk losing your own LinkedIn functionality, simply log out of your LinkedIn profile. Then, do a Google search on the person whose profile you want to view, making sure to add in “LinkedIn” to the search term.

Click on their profile and view it. Since you are logged out, your name and title will not appear in their analytics. As long as the person you want to view hasn’t opted out of a publicly searchable LinkedIn profile, you can see it.

Staying anonymous on LinkedIn isn’t difficult — it just takes a bit of a workaround. Just remember that, when you are finished viewing profiles anonymously, you should change your own profile to public if you want others to be able to find you.