Are you a LinkedIn user? It seems the social network for professionals has pulled a Facebook on users, automatically signing everyone up for auto-advertising using your own personal information to shill services to your own network of friends and colleagues. Here's how to opt out in a jiffy...
The basic gist of what has happened: LinkedIn is looking to use you and your information to advertise in similar fashion as Facebook, using your personal data to serve up customized advertising to your own network of friends.
In our opinion the biggest issue we have with this is not the use of your information in advertising, but how they went about it. Instead of offering you an opportunity to give permission to use your personal info - including name and photo - for their advertising scheme, they decided to make it a feature you'd have to actively opt out of. This is annoying because the option is stored in a seldom used area of LinkedIn's settings, a bad example of how to lose the trust of your own users.
To turn of LinkedIn's auto-advertising feature do the following:
- Sign into LinkedIn.
- Click your name in the top right and click on the "settings" tab.
- On the Settings page select the "Account" tab in the bottom left.
- To the right of the Account tab choose the "Manage Social Advertising" button.
- A pop-up will appear and be sure to uncheck the box giving LinkedIn permission to use your info for social advertising.
Bonus: If you want to get extra protective about your data, be sure to disable sharing of 3rd party data under "Email Preferences" and "Groups, Companies, and Advertising."
(via Business Insider)
(Image via Flickr user nan palmero licensed for use under creative commons)
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Don't forget to turn off the "enhanced advertising" box too.
thanks for the how-to. Other sites were talking about it, but not how to take care of it. All turned off now.
Linked in is tricky in general, I found. First the font is tiny (why?), so it's hard to read. When I first logged in, the next page suggests contacts. Eight contacts are displayed, all of whom I knew, so I said yes to all. But I didn't see the scroll bar and invited 95 other people, many of whom I didn't know and some I did not want. Linkedin "checks" everybody. You have to de-select.
Now I click on "skip this step," but then page 2 asks you again, and all the potential contacts are selected again. So be advised.