To prevent someone from being notified that you viewed their profile on LinkedIn, open Settings and Privacy, then go to Visibility > Profile Viewing Options. Set profile viewing to "Private Mode" to remain anonymous when you view someone's profile.
LinkedIn often tells people when you view their profiles and shows them your name. That person may even get an email or alert saying you viewed their profile. Here’s how to browse privately without LinkedIn sharing this information.
It may seem silly to prefer anonymity on a social network, but other social networks don’t work this way. Facebook and Twitter don’t send someone a notification whenever you view their profile.
To find this option, head to the LinkedIn website, click your profile icon on the top bar, and select “Settings & Privacy.”
Click “Visibility” on the left-hand side, then click “Profile viewing options.”
Select how you want to appear. You can select “Private Mode” for pure private browsing or select your private profile characteristics, which may appear as just “Someone on LinkedIn” or something more specific.
People will still see that someone viewed their profile after you view their profile — but they’ll see only that an anonymous person viewed it.
As LinkedIn warns you on this settings page, there’s just one downside: When you become anonymous to other people, they become anonymous to you. LinkedIn will hide the names of people who view your profile from you after you enable this anonymity option.
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One of the questions professionals (mostly lawyers!) most often ask me is ‘how can I look at people’s LinkedIn profiles without them knowing I’ve looked?’
You have two options:
1. Change your ‘Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile’ setting to ‘anonymous’. To do so:
a. Go to your ‘Privacy & Settings’ (hover over your photo in the top right hand corner of the LinkedIn toolbar and select ‘Privacy & Settings’ from the drop down list)
b. Scroll down to ‘Privacy Controls’ and select ‘Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile’
c. There are three options – select either of the last two.
You can now take a look at others’ profiles without them knowing it’s you. Bear in mind that, while you have one of these final two options selected, you will not be able to see any info about who’s viewed your profile – so you’ll want to change it back to the first option ‘Your name and headline’ once you’re done.
2. Log out of LinkedIn and search for the person using Google or another search engine. Click on their LinkedIn profile and this will take you through to their public profile. Most people have their full profile on display meaning you can see everything that’s there (with the exception of anything they’ve published to LinkedIn, anything they’ve uploaded or linked to and details of their connections). Searching for people’s LinkedIn profiles through search engines (while logged out of LinkedIn) is also a great way to see more info for people who are 3 degree connections or outside your network – LinkedIn limits the info you can see for these people when you have the free (or a cheaper premium) account but search engines show whatever information a person has opted for them to show.
What is your reaction when you see someone has looked at your profile anonymously? Do you go into stealth mode sometimes?