It recently came to my attention that LinkedIn has a setting activated by default allowing it to “use my name, photo in social advertising.” Below is a screenshot of this setting in my LinkedIn profile.

First, I should state I understand this is a means of increasing social engagement and connection-making within LinkedIn. What I find problematic is LinkedIn’s flagrant disregard for our privacy by making such a setting default. If you feel the same way, here are the steps to disable this feature in your LinkedIn account, provided in graphical form:

LinkedIn Privacy Step 1: Under your name in the top right of your account click on “Settings”

LinkedIn Privacy Step 2: Click on “Account” on the resulting Account & Settings page.

LinkedIn Privacy Step 3: Click on “Manage Social Advertising” in the “Account” tab you just enabled.

LinkedIn Privacy Step 4: The Last Step is to un-check the option “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.” Then save the changes.

You are done! A special thanks goes out to Steve Woodruff for bringing this to our collective attention.

For more social media privacy tips and news here are some places to start:

• Profile pics on social media sites pose privacy risk, researcher warns
• 5 Essential Facebook Privacy Tips
• (for Canadians) Social Networking and Privacy: from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Privacy and Social Media – how I tracked down an entirely family from a single tweet
• … search for “social media privacy” to find more results

Check out Stepforth for more articles by Ross Dunn