How to Anonymously Stalk People on LinkedIn
The ‘Who’s viewed your profile’ feature is kind of a double edged sword.
Have you ever slyly smiled at the email you get from LinkedIn with the subject line “<your name here>, people are looking at your LinkedIn profile”? A marvellous feature that reveals to you other individuals who have been looking at your LinkedIn profile. Some are flattering — a well respected expert in your chosen field perhaps — whilst some are downright questionable — a colleague you see everyday on the way to the ladies’ room, but how does he know my name?
Well, the novelty of this feature ends at just about the time when you are on the sharp side of this double edged sword. (This did not happen to me today)
Because as much as we want to know who has been looking at our profiles, we can’t bear the thought of people whose profiles we devour know of our existence. Well, that’s not entirely true. On occasions, for professional purposes, it might be beneficial to let someone know that you have been looking at their profile. It might lead to a connect request, or an invitation to a group, or if you’re really lucky it may even lead to a job offer.
However, for those of you not stalking for professional reasons on LinkedIn (caused by a plethora of reasons such as a private Facebook profile not listed in Google), this feature can turn your stalking habit into one awkward social faux pas.
Fortunately, as I figured out today flipping madly through the LinkedIn FAQs, it turns out LinkedIn does provide a veil of anonymity. So here’s how to keep your profile anonymous when using LinkedIn to look up whoever it is you are trying to look up.
1. Go to Privacy & Settings and click on Manage.
2. Click on “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile”
3. Select “You will be totally anonymous”
And you are done! Welcome to anonymous LinkedIn stalking!
However, I fully understand that some of you may have reached this article because you were in the middle of looking at the education history of a certain someone and realized mid-stalk that you are in fact on LinkedIn and that hey! your views are traceable! (This, again, did not happen to me today)
Here’s how to put out that fire: Block them.
You just better hope that there is some kind of system lag and that they haven’t been notified of a profile view by LinkedIn, in which case the damage is permanently done. Sorry. So put out that fire as soon as possible. (Still crossing my fingers and toes)
Now that your stalking calamities are over, take a deep breath, keep calm and be grateful that Facebook has not adopted this feature.
