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LinkedIn

Communication & Work

Source-backed from the published policy documents behind this report

139
reviewed findings
15
key findings
3
free to read here
7
verified controls

1 of them depends on where you live.

Privacy Snapshot

What the published policy covers, and how much we found under each. Tap one to read it.

  • Location 1 finding
  • Camera & Photos 1 finding
  • Contacts 5 findings
  • Messages 8 findings
  • Sensitive Data 3 findings
  • Tracking 14 findings
  • Advertising & Profiling 23 findings
  • Sharing 44 findings
  • Controls & Permissions 32 findings
  • Other 8 findings

3 findings, in full

The first 3 of this report’s 15 key findings, complete — claim, reasoning, and the policy’s own wording.

Advertising & Profiling LinkedIn infers your gender from your first name or the pronouns you use

What this means

You do not enter your gender. LinkedIn works it out from your first name or from your pronoun usage, and applies that inference for advertising purposes.

LinkedIn infers your gender using your first name or pronoun usage for advertising purposes.

Why this matters

An inference you never volunteered can shape which ads reach you, and there is no field on your profile that corrects it.

What the policy says

Information inferred from data described above (e.g., using job titles from a profile to infer industry, seniority, and compensation bracket; using graduation dates to infer age or using first names or pronoun usage to infer gender; using your feed activity to infer your interests; or using device data to recognize you as a Member).

From LinkedIn Privacy Policy

View the source document Source captured on

What you can do

A privacy control may reduce part of this practice.

Plainlyst Premium shows where to find it, what it changes, what it doesn’t change, and what may stop working.

View in Privacy Tune-Up
Advertising & Profiling LinkedIn infers your industry, seniority and compensation bracket from your job title

What this means

Your job title is the input. LinkedIn draws inferences from your data, and names industry, seniority and compensation bracket as what it infers, for advertising purposes.

LinkedIn uses inferences drawn from your data—such as job titles to infer industry, seniority, and compensation bracket—for advertising purposes.

Why this matters

A guess at what you earn is being made and used, from a line you listed for an entirely different reason.

What the policy says

Information inferred from data described above (e.g., using job titles from a profile to infer industry, seniority, and compensation bracket; using graduation dates to infer age or using first names or pronoun usage to infer gender; using your feed activity to infer your interests; or using device data to recognize you as a Member).

From LinkedIn Privacy Policy

View the source document Source captured on

What you can do

A privacy control may reduce part of this practice.

Plainlyst Premium shows where to find it, what it changes, what it doesn’t change, and what may stop working.

View in Privacy Tune-Up
Sharing Advertising partners can combine their own data with device identifiers LinkedIn sends them

What this means

LinkedIn passes hashed IDs and device identifiers to advertising partners. Those partners can join them to personal data they collected directly from you.

Advertising partners can combine personal data they collect directly from you with hashed IDs or device identifiers received from LinkedIn.

Why this matters

Two partial records of you become one fuller record, held by a company you did not choose to deal with.

What the policy says

Advertising partners can associate personal data collected by the advertiser directly from you with hashed IDs or device identifiers received from us. We seek to contractually require such advertising partners to obtain your explicit, opt-in consent before doing so where legally required, and in such instances, we take steps to ensure that consent has been provided before processing data from them.

From LinkedIn Privacy Policy

View the source document Source captured on

What you can do

A privacy control may reduce part of this practice.

Plainlyst Premium shows where to find it, what it changes, what it doesn’t change, and what may stop working.

View in Privacy Tune-Up

12 more key findings a free account opens, by topic

  • Advertising & Profiling 2
  • Controls & Permissions 2
  • Messages 2
  • Contacts 1
  • Location 1
  • Other 1
  • Sensitive Data 1
  • Sharing 1
  • Tracking 1

Create a free account to read all 15

And every key finding for every company you use, with your companies saved and a dashboard of what is worth seeing across them, plus your Privacy Tune-Up. An email and a password — no card.

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Unlock the complete LinkedIn report

A free account opens all 15 key findings. 124 additional reviewed findings are available in the complete report.

  • Camera & Photos 1 more
  • Contacts 4 more
  • Messages 6 more
  • Sensitive Data 2 more
  • Tracking 13 more
  • Advertising & Profiling 19 more
  • Sharing 42 more
  • Controls & Permissions 30 more
  • Other 7 more

  • Complete report

    124 additional reviewed findings, each shown with the policy wording behind it, like the 15 above.

  • Privacy Tune-Up

    7 verified privacy controls, 3 of them high-impact — where each one is, what it changes, and what may stop working.

  • Stay protectedPlanned

    Told when the policy changes.

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Plainlyst simplifies selected disclosures from privacy policies. It does not claim to capture every statement or practice in a policy, and it is not legal advice.

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Operated by JC RESERVE LLC

james@plainlysthq.com

Official sources only. Every finding quotes the company’s own policy, and every record names the document behind it. We do not grade anybody.