How to Hide LinkedIn Connections: Easy Steps

Protecting your professional network and maintaining privacy on LinkedIn is crucial in today's digital landscape. Whether you're trying to prevent competitors from poaching your clients or keep your job search under wraps, hiding your LinkedIn connections can be a game-changer. But how exactly do you do it?

In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through the step-by-step process of concealing your LinkedIn connections, both manually and with the help of AI automation tools like Bardeen. By the end, you'll be a master at safeguarding your valuable network and navigating LinkedIn with confidence. Ready to take control of your online privacy? Let's dive in!

Why You Should Consider Hiding Your LinkedIn Connections

Hiding your LinkedIn connections can provide several benefits for maintaining privacy and protecting your professional network:

1. 1. Maintain Privacy and Confidentiality

   By hiding your LinkedIn connections, you can maintain the privacy and confidentiality of your professional network. This is especially important if you have connections with clients, prospects, or other sensitive business relationships that you want to keep discreet. Competitors or others may try to gain insights into your business by viewing your connections, but hiding them prevents this.

2. 2. Prevent Competitor Poaching

   Hiding your LinkedIn connections can prevent competitors from poaching your clients or prospects. If your connections are visible, competitors may try to identify and reach out to your valuable contacts to offer their own services or products. By keeping your connections hidden, you make it more difficult for competitors to target your network and potentially steal business from you.

3. 3. Avoid Unwanted Connection Requests

   When your connections are visible, it can lead to receiving unwanted connection requests or spam messages from people outside your network. These requests may come from salespeople, recruiters, or others who see that you are connected to someone they want to reach. Hiding your connections helps reduce these unwanted requests and keeps your network more focused and relevant.

4. 4. Keep Job Search Activities Private

   If you are actively searching for a new job, hiding your LinkedIn connections can help keep your activities more discreet from your current employer and coworkers. You may be connecting with recruiters, hiring managers, or others at companies you are interested in, and you likely don't want your current employer to be aware of these activities. Hiding your connections provides an added layer of privacy during a job search.

Hiding your LinkedIn connections gives you more control over your professional network and can help you avoid several potential issues. For additional control, consider using a LinkedIn profile scraper to manage your data efficiently.

Next, we'll walk through the step-by-step process of how to hide your LinkedIn connections in your account settings.

Step-by-Step Guide to Hiding LinkedIn Connections

To maintain privacy and control over your LinkedIn network, you can easily hide your connections list from other members. Follow these simple steps:

1. 1. Access Settings & Privacy Menu

   Click on the thumbnail of your profile picture in the top right corner of the LinkedIn homepage. From the dropdown menu that appears, select the "Settings & Privacy" option to access your account settings. This is where you can manage the visibility of your profile, activity, and connections.

2. 2. Navigate to Visibility Settings

   Once in the settings menu, click on the "Visibility" tab located on the left side of the page. This section contains various options for controlling what parts of your LinkedIn profile and activity are visible to others. Scroll down to find the "Visibility of your profile & network" section.

3. 3. Adjust Connections Visibility Setting

   Under the "Visibility of your profile & network" section, click on the "Connections" option. Here you will see a toggle switch labeled "Who can see your connections." By default, this is set to "Your connections," meaning your 1st-degree connections can view your list of contacts. To hide your connections, switch the toggle to "Only you."

4. 4. Understand Visibility Implications

   When you choose to make your connections visible only to you, it means that no one else on LinkedIn, including those you are directly connected with, will be able to see your full list of contacts. However, mutual connections will still be shown. Keep in mind that hiding your connections may limit networking opportunities, as others cannot see shared contacts.

Adjusting your LinkedIn connections visibility is a quick process that gives you more control over your professional network privacy. For more advanced privacy and data management, consider using tools to integrate LinkedIn with other platforms.

Take control of your LinkedIn data and simplify your workflow with Bardeen. Use Bardeen to scrape LinkedIn with Bardeen for efficient data management and integration into other apps.

Next up, we'll explore how to selectively manage connection visibility for specific individuals on LinkedIn.

Selectively Hiding Connections from Specific LinkedIn Members

LinkedIn provides options to manage connection visibility on a case-by-case basis. This allows you to maintain professional relationships while protecting your network's privacy from certain individuals.

1. 1. Hide Connections from Specific Members

   If you want to prevent a particular LinkedIn member from viewing your full connections list, you can hide your connections from them individually. Go to their profile, click the "More" button, and select "Hide connections from [Name]." They will no longer be able to see who you are connected with on LinkedIn.

2. 2. Block or Remove Unwanted Connections

   For more control over who has access to your LinkedIn network, consider blocking or removing connections that you no longer wish to be associated with. Blocking a member will completely restrict their access to your profile and activity. Removing a connection simply severs the direct link between your accounts.

3. 3. Customize Profile Visibility Settings

   LinkedIn allows you to adjust your profile visibility for the public and your connections separately. You can choose to display a limited public profile, with key information hidden from non-connections. For your 1st-degree connections, consider showing a more comprehensive view while still keeping sensitive details private.

4. 4. Maintain Privacy and Professionalism

   When managing connection visibility on LinkedIn, strike a balance between privacy and openness. Hiding connections from competitors or blocking unwanted contact is prudent. However, being too restrictive may limit valuable networking opportunities. Use discretion and adjust settings thoughtfully to make the most of LinkedIn's features.

By selectively hiding connections and scraping LinkedIn data, you can effectively manage your LinkedIn privacy settings.

Thanks for sticking with us through this in-depth guide! Your dedication to mastering LinkedIn privacy is admirable (and a bit amusing - who knew hiding connections could be so riveting?).

Conclusions

Knowing how to hide LinkedIn connections is crucial for maintaining privacy and professionalism in your career network.

This guide covered:

• Reasons to consider hiding connections, such as protecting your network and job search discretion
• Step-by-step instructions for making your connections private in LinkedIn's settings
• Managing visibility for specific individuals by hiding, blocking or removing connections as needed

Master these LinkedIn privacy settings or risk competitors poaching your contacts and awkward encounters with your boss during a stealth job hunt. For a more efficient way to automate sales prospecting, consider using advanced tools that streamline your LinkedIn activities.

Use Bardeen's enrich LinkedIn profile feature to save time and keep your data up to date with less effort.