LinkedIn – Time to Change your Password and Update your Privacy Options

In light of the recent LinkedIn password leakage incident, it’s highly recommended that you change your password. But – while you’re logged in and making changes, why not look at the Privacy options and tighten them up, too?

First off – to find out if your LinkedIn account has been leaked, visit LastPass/LinkedIn. This secure site, will ask you to enter your LinkedIn password, at which point a screen will appear to inform you if your information has been compromised or not.

No matter which notification you receive, we recommend you follow these quick steps to change your password and privacy options.

It’s not “immediately obvious” where you can make changes to your privacy settings. Start by hovering your cursor over your name near the top-right corner of screen and choose “Settings”.

This will bring you to the Privacy Controls page within your Profile. Here you can set the following options:

  • Select who can see your activity feed
  • Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile
  • Select who can see your connections
  • Change your profile photo and visibility
  • Edit your profile > Personal Information Section (Birthday/Marital Status)
  • Edit your public profile (how do you appear in public search results)

But you’re not done yet! If you’re trying to protect yourself from being subject to LinkedIn profiling attacks, you’ll likely want to investigate the options under “Email Preferences”. The Email Preferences option permits you to:

  • Turn on/off LinkedIn announcements
  • Turn on/off invitations to participate in research

To further tighten your LinkedIn profile, the LinkedIn Groups, Companies & Applications > Privacy Controls screen permits you to:

  • Turn on/off data sharing with 3rd party applications
  • Manage settings for LinkedIn plugins on third-party sites

Finally, the Account tab permits you to:

  • Manage Advertising Preferences

This final option permits you to “opt out” from seeing ads from third-party websites. Historically, third-party ads have proven to be an infection vector; it is highly recommended to disable ads if they are not needed.

 

These options may change in the future, but at the present, making these changes can markedly strengthen the privacy and security stance of your LinkedIn account. Why not do it today?