LinkedIn is like every other social media platform.
It stores a ton of user data.
Have you ever wondered what kind of data they have on you?
Well, now you can get a peek inside.
LinkedIn Data
LinkedIn announced the roll out of new tools for securing your account data.
One of those tools allows you to download all the stored LinkedIn data specific to your account.
- Do you want to have that stored data?
- Maybe – maybe not
- I’ll let you decide
I received a zipped file with the information shown below. Most of the information is only from 2012 to 2014 (so far). I signed up in 2009.
- Account information including when you signed up, login attempts (two-years-worth) and emails you provided (even the ones you deleted)
- Marketing like ads you ran (I never have), data LinkedIn grabs from your profile for targeting, and any ads you clicked on
- Group information including comments, “Likes” you gave, and your posts to Groups
- Networking data including your connections, endorsements you received and the skills listed, and recommendations you gave and received
- Other interactions including your updates, and comments you posted on other updates or shared articles
There is also a file on the search queries you have done.
Pretty boring stuff − or maybe it’s me. Maybe my LinkedIn data is boring.
I did wonder if certain LinkedIn users saw their snarky comments, would it make them think twice about what they post? Probably not.
Where to Find the Data Download
If you have not hit the snooze alarm yet and are still interested in downloading your data, the following is how you do that.
1. Go to Account & Settings and click on Privacy & Settings
2. Click on Account (lower left corner)
3. Under Helpful Links, click on Request an archive of your data
4. Click on Request archive button.
That’s it. Simple.
- What do you think?
- Have I spared you wasted time?
- Do you think it’s worth the download?
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Hmm, I don’t know, Cathy. If the networking details include full contact profiles, then that could be useful. For the rest, I regard it as ephemeral so I’m not sure it’s necessary. (Of course, I’ll have to download it once to check.) 😉
No, it just has the same information you could get from downloading your connections – names, titles, company, contact info.
I’m not sure what I expected from this but I was underwhelmed.
Just applied for mine – we’ll see. Chances are, I’ll have the same reaction. 😉
I’ll be interested in your thoughts, Sharon. I think you are more appreciative of analytical stuff than I am. What can I say, it’s my simple brain. 😉
Thanks for sharing how to do this Cathy. I think it’s most important to have all the contact info, especially the names and emails of all connections.
Hi John. You’re welcome. As I said to Sharon, if you don’t want all this data, you can get the same information by exporting your connections. I do that a semi-regular basis.
Thanks, John.
Cathy, I can’t even find my account/settings – nor can I paste a link in here for you. I hate social media this morning… love your info…
Don’t we love techie issues. 😉 You should be able to find account settings by hovering over your photo in the upper right hand corner of LinkedIn for a drop-down menu.
Thanks Cathy… I’d tried the big picture of me… of course, it’s the little one on the right… so I too have requested whatever this is.
lol, wonder why it takes them 72 hours? Oh well.
Seems to me I had mine the same day or the next.
Mine arrived the same day too… wonder why they even post 72 hours… oh well.
CYA would be my guess, Anne. 😉
A most important follow-up question…. Once you’ve obtained it, what do you plan to do with it? Is this like the government tapping all our phones and then telling us- after an attack, “Oh, we would know that would happen- if we had studied all the phone messages on file”?
And why is it, Roy, I have this suspicion there is data they are not sharing? 😉
Great question, Roy… it is a bit opaque imo.
Roy’s good at that, Anne. 🙂
I just requested my data, Cathy, and I’m curious to see what inside and how I can use it. 🙂
All in all, I appreciate LinkedIn’s effort to take good care of users’ data without abuses. Hope they keep this policy going.
~ Luana
I’ll be interested to hear what you think, Luana. Thanks for stopping by.
Great post, Cathy. I exported it, so we’ll see what I get. I haven’t been very active, so it probably won’t be useful. Worth a shot though. Also, thanks for mentioning that you export your connections from time to time. I’ve never done that before, so I went ahead and did that too. 🙂
Thanks, Ashley. You are welcome. 🙂 I’ll be interested in your take.