LinkedIn has changed its privacy conditions January 30, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in LinkedIn, Random musings.trackback
I received the following very helpful message from a contact and am forwarding it for your awareness and consideration. By following the simple instructions you can opt out.
“Without attracting too much publicity, LinkedIn has updated their privacy conditions last summer. Without any action from your side, LinkedIn is now allowed to use your name and picture in any of their advertisements!
Some simple actions to be considered:
1. Place the cursor on your name at the top right corner of the Linkedin screen. In the pull down menu , select “settings”
2. Then click “Account” on the bottom left of the screen
3. In the column next to Account, select the option “Manage Social Advertising”
4. Finally un-tick the box “LinkedIn may use my name and photo in social advertising”
5. and Save
How to inform your connections? Simple: Via Inbox >Compose message , you can send a message to up to 50 connections at once. I am sure all of them will appreciate being informed.
Musings from an overworked translator 
I’m just wondering why this is a BAD thing. Yes, from a privacy standpoint, I can see it would have been polite for LinkedIn to tell us. But the whole reason people get a LinkedIn profile is for marketing. You want to give my company free advertising to your entire community? Go for it. I’m not going to stop you.
If you don’t mind having your name and photo used without your permission then don’t change the settings. They are welcome to use my name with my permission, but not without.
Thanks for sharing, Jill. I’ve changed my settings and forwarded your post to my LinkedIn contacts.
Thank you for this post. I have changed my settings and informed my contacts. I liked to be asked before giving up a portion of my private information.
Well, I totally agree with Terena Bell. I’d rather try it out to find out whether it is or it isn’t a bad thing because it might be good publicity. So let’s see the outcome.
Thanks, Marcos! I can understand what some of the others are saying, but to correct Kristina, it’s not private information. It stopped being private information the minute you published it online. Don’t go on a site intending to generate publicity, then get upset when you get publicity. It doesn’t make sense to me.
Well, sure. But privacy changes should be more publicized by the social network itself, and should be opt-in not opt-out. Some responsibility needs to lie with LinkedIN to keep us informed. Then everyone can manage their own limitations. Sure, everything I put on LinkedIN is public, and visible: but people get to me by a specific search, and people searching for that stuff are people I want to find me.
I’m not sure I want my face blasted across the wider Internet indiscriminately in a form that may or may not benefit my brand, without being asked explicit permission.
Hi Jill,
On my own LinkedIn page, it says
“PRIVACY CONTROLS
* Manage Advertising Preferences”
and a few other less relevant things in a box if I click on “Account”. There’s a check box next to the words “LinkedIn may show me ads on third-party websites”, which can be unchecked, but nothing else, so it seems LinkedIn has changed things again since your acquaintance wrote to you; item 4 doesn’t seem to be there any more. Still, the warning was a helpful way of checking my own settings and modifying those I didn’t want to have. Thanks.
Carl
I had a feeling LinkedIn would change things when a reporter from Reuters contacted me to interview me about my feelings about it. I told him I wasn’t all that invested, so he didn’t pursue it. I’m sure he wrote the article using other people though. A little media attention can do wonders.