Is Your LinkedIn Profile Safe?

LinkedIn, a professional network. If you are a professional, you should be on LinkedIn to expand your professional network and you can find new job opportunities also here.

But like other social media profiles, your LinkedIn profile needs security and your attention as the threats of cybercriminals are increasing day by day.

To ensure that your Linkedin account is secured and you have full control over it we will discuss here some points which you can use to make your account more secure. 

Privacy Settings:

Regularly update and check your Linkedin account privacy settings to ensure that what information you are sharing with others. There are various settings in LinkedIn which you can turn on or off depending upon which type of information you want to share or receive on Linkedin. 

Below are few such settings that you can see in your Linkedin profile privacy settings:

1. Activity Broadcast: Your profile change activities or when you follow any company profile, such activities come under this category. If you don't want your connection to see such activity updates you can turn it off in your privacy settings
2. Profile viewing option: When you view any of your connections profile, they can view your name and profile by default. But if you want, you can change this setting to anonymous viewing of profile. If you select anonymous view mode then you also can not able to see who has seen your profile also.
3. Who can see your Connections: You can select whether others can see your connection list or not. You can make your connection list visible to you only by this option. 
4. Change your profile visibility: Through this setting option you can select whether your profile and profile photo will be visible to your 1st-degree connections, your network( up to 3rd-degree connections), all of the Linkedin members, or public view (can search and view using Google or Bing search). Choose as per your profile privacy requirements.

These are a few examples of Linkedin privacy settings. There are many such settings available in the privacy settings sections of Linkedin profile that you can control as per your requirements.

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Two-Step Verification:

The two-step verification method provides you additional security whenever a login attempt is made to your account through a new device. To know more about the Two-Step verification login method, check out this post What is Two Factor Authentication or 2FA?

Linkedin provides an option to turn on two-step verification for the login process. When this option is turned on, you will receive a numeric code via SMS to your phone number whenever any attempt for login is done to your account. That numeric code will be required to login into your account enhancing your profile security.

Keep Your Password Up-To-Date:

This should be a common practice for your all social media profiles. Some of its basics are:

1. Change your password in every 3-4 months
2. Don't use the same password for multiple sites
3. Think of a phrase or song and convert it into a strong password
4. Don't use words from a dictionary
5. Use symbols, Capitals, and punctuations
6. Never share your passwords
7. Whenever you use a public device, sign out properly before leaving

Phishing:

Phishing is becoming a common tactic that criminals use to steal your information and your money, so you should always be alert when you receive any such emails.

LinkedIn never asks for your sensitive personal and financial information through emails. 

You can confirm whether a message is really from LinkedIn or not, below are few checkpoints to look for:

• All LinkedIn messages should contain a security footer 
• Never open any attachments or click any links in an email that seems suspicious, or is from a person or company you don't know

Some indications that should raise your suspicions that the email claiming to be from LinkedIn is not:

• The message will try to tell you to open an email attachment or install a software update. LinkedIn will never ask you to do this.
• The email message contains bad spelling and grammatical mistakes.
• The email message will contain a threat of some kind. For example: your account will be deleted unless you update through the given link.

To check any suspicious links in any email or site you can hover your mouse pointer over it and can see on which site it is redirecting to. If it is not directing to LinkedIn, it is a fraudulent link.

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Impersonates:

Cybercriminals and frauds nowadays try to get your personal information and money by approaching you through Linkedin profiles calming that they are from XYZ big company and want to offer you a job.

Never accept such an offer without properly checking that person's profile carefully. 

Check for their profile experience, company profile, profile pictures, etc.

You can also do an image search of such a profile through Google Image Search and see that those pictures are not taken from any other social media profiles.

Beware of such impersonates, your alertness can only save you.

Conclusion:

LinkedIn is a great platform for professional people to increase their connection and share their knowledge. But like other social media profiles, you have to be alert here also to maintain your profile and personal security. By knowing all these points today you can act upon it and can increase the security of your LinkedIn profile.

Share this information with your colleagues also, so that they can also secure their profiles.

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