When using LinkedIn, it’s very important to understand and use the features available on the Settings page as they allow you to control many different aspects of your LinkedIn account.  Especially important are the the features that control what others can see about you and your activity – your privacy settings.

There are a number of ways that you can control how and what you want to share with your network and the wider world.  What you decide to share (and what you decide to keep private) is largely dependent on your comfort level and your goals for using LinkedIn.  While it’s useful to spend time becoming familiar with all of the different functions on the Settings page, these are the most relevant privacy settings:

1. Public Profile – From here you can control what parts of your profile are visible to the public, which is anyone who does not have a first-level connection with you.  While it’s usually useful to display all of your information to the public, you might want to restrict some of it depending on your industry and position.
2. Status Visibility – These settings determine who can see your status updates.  If you are using LinkedIn to create a brand or stay on people’s minds, it’s helpful to keep this visibility broad.  If you are using it to maintain your close connections, keep these set to just your connections or your network.
3. Connections Browse – This allows you to control whether your connections can see your other connections.  In general, it’s accepted practice to leave this open (you are on LinkedIn to network, after all), but if you have a specific reason that you would not want others to see your network, you can turn this setting off.
4. Profile Views – When you look at another person’s profile, this controls how you show up in their “Who’s viewed my profile” log.  Again, if you are using LinkedIn to build your brand, you might want to leave your “digital calling card” when you view a profile.  Most people set this to this to the anonymous profile characteristics.