What LinkedIn Collects
LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with over 900 million members. It collects your name, email, phone number, work history, education, skills, professional connections, endorsements, content you post, and messages. LinkedIn uses this data for its core professional networking service, job matching, and to provide data to its advertising and AI partners. LinkedIn is not a traditional data broker — it is a platform you actively use. However, your professional profile, work history, and connections are visible to others and may be scraped by third parties. LinkedIn has faced scrutiny for sharing user data with AI training partners.
How to Remove Yourself
Step 1: Go to LinkedIn Public Profile Settings
Navigate to https://www.linkedin.com/public-profile/settings — this is LinkedIn's privacy settings dashboard for controlling your public profile visibility. You must be logged into LinkedIn to access this page.
Step 2: Manage Public Profile Visibility
Toggle your public profile visibility on or off. When set to private, your profile is not visible to people who are not logged into LinkedIn and is not indexed by search engines to the same degree.
Step 3: Review Additional Visibility Settings
Also review these related settings:
- "Edit public profile & URL" — control exactly what information is shown when your profile is public
- Discover by email/phone — control whether people can find you using your email or phone number
- Off-LinkedIn visibility — control what information LinkedIn shares with third-party sites
Step 4: Opt Out of AI Data Collection
LinkedIn has a separate opt-out for AI training data sharing. Visit linkedin.com/top-content/artificial-intelligence/navigating-ai-risks/how-to-opt-out-of-linkedin-ai-data-collection to opt out of having your data used for LinkedIn AI model training.
Important Notes
- There is no account deletion opt-out URL — LinkedIn is a platform you must actively manage. To delete your account entirely, use the account settings deletion function.
- Visibility settings are not the same as data deletion — LinkedIn still retains your data even when visibility is restricted.
- Data shared with advertising and AI partners may not be fully reversed even with visibility settings changed.
- LinkedIn's data sharing with Microsoft (its parent company) and advertising partners continues to some degree even with restricted settings.
- Fully deleting your LinkedIn account is the only way to remove your professional data from LinkedIn's systems — visibility restrictions are a partial measure only.
Contact / Email Template
Subject: Privacy Settings Request — [Your Name]
Dear LinkedIn Privacy Team,
I am writing regarding my privacy settings and data sharing preferences on LinkedIn. I have already adjusted my public profile visibility settings and would like to confirm the following:
- My profile is set to private/off
- My data is excluded from AI model training
- My information is not being shared with third-party advertisers beyond LinkedIn's core service
Please confirm what data sharing settings are currently active on my account and advise if there are additional steps I should take.
Thank you, [Your Name]
Account Settings: linkedin.com/public-profile/settings AI Data Opt-Out: linkedin.com/top-content/artificial-intelligence/navigating-ai-risks/how-to-opt-out-of-linkedin-ai-data-collection