LinkedIn Has Info On You: How to Control What LinkedIn Knows About You

 

What LinkedIn Knows About You

LinkedIn is a social networking website that allows you to hunt for jobs, connect with people in your field, and publicly display your professional experience. However, to make full use of the site’s features, you have to divulge a lot of personal and work information to your connections and potential employers.

You can manage your LinkedIn profile privacy settings to protect your personal information from people you don’t know. However, like many other social media sites, LinkedIn might use your data for research and advertising purposes.

Given current concerns about online privacy, it’s important to be conscious of who has access to your data, and what they do with it.

RELATED: How to Manage Your LinkedIn Privacy Settings

To manage your data settings, click “Me” at the upper right, and then select Settings and Privacy > Privacy. Scroll down to “How LinkedIn Uses Your Data.”

The settings in this section can be grouped into the following categories:

• “Data and Activity”: This allows you to obtain a copy of your data, as well as a log of all the times it was shared with other parties.
• “Calendar and Contacts”: Here, you manage interactions between LinkedIn and your accounts and phone numbers.
• “Data Availability”: This allows you to choose whether your data is available to LinkedIn’s partners for research and to provide additional information to the site.

Checking Your Data and Activity

Several options will give you a better picture of the data you have stored, and with whom that information is shared.

The first is “Manage Your Data and Activity,” which provides a log of every time your data was shared with a third-party, such as an employer or linked service. You can also see the dates your contacts were synced, when you changed a significant privacy setting, or when LinkedIn updated its terms of service.

You can also request an archived version of the data on your LinkedIn account with the “Get a Copy of Your Data” setting. You have the following options when downloading your information:

• Full archive: This includes all your connections, as well as your account history, posts, and other data the site gathers about you based on your activity and the information you upload.
• Partial archive: You can also download specific pieces of your data, such as your messages, contacts, posts, or profile information.

Note that requesting your full archive can take up to 24 hours. The more information tied to your account, the longer it will take for your download to be ready. When it’s complete, you’ll receive a notification on the site and via email.

Toward the end of the section, you’ll see the “Search History” setting. This gives you an overview of companies, profiles, and groups you’ve recently looked up via the site’s built-in search engine. You can clear your search history at any time.

Calendars and Contacts

Depending on the type of information you used during the signup process, you likely have a phone number and/or email address linked to your LinkedIn account. While visitors can’t see your contact information by default, they might be able to search for your profile using your phone or email.

You can determine who can find you using these options in the “Manage Who Can Discover Your Profile From Your Email Address/Phone Number” settings.

You can select one of the following options:

• Everyone
• 2nd-Degree Connections
• Nobody

The “Sync Contacts” and “Sync Calendar” options allow you to link your account with your contacts and calendars on external services, like Google or Outlook. You can even sync the contacts on your phone.

When you click one of these settings, you’ll be taken to the “Manage Synced Sources” menu, where you can individually configure each service.

RELATED: How to Import LinkedIn Contacts While Keeping Your Email Private

Data Availability

There are many features across LinkedIn that use your demographic and personal information. For example, when applying for a job, premium subscribers can compare their profile against those of other applicants.

You can also voluntarily provide salary information to LinkedIn via the “Salary Data on LinkedIn” setting. You can then compare your salary expectations with other applicants and positions.

You can also provide your gender and disability status in the “Personal Demographic Information” section. These will be used for LinkedIn features, but won’t be displayed on your profile.

Additionally, the “Social, Economic and Workplace Research” section will add your profile to research studies conducted by LinkedIn’s third parties.

The site doesn’t provide any information about the nature of these studies, nor who these third-parties are. If you’re concerned about the privacy of your data, we recommend you toggle-Off this option.

 

Origin of Species: A History of O'Reilly Animals - O'Reilly Media

Today a conversation mired in Cyber Monday deals, of which surprisingly included half off Safari subscription services, turned to the wonderful illustrations on the book covers of O'Reilly. 

Yes, this is geek stream of consciousness in action around the water cooler. 

Tucked away on the O'Reilly web site is a brief article about the cover Animals and the wonderful artist who creates them, Lorrie LeJeune. 

From 1995 until 2003, Lorrie was a senior product marketing manager and then editor at the O'Reilly Cambridge, Massachusetts, office. She has since moved on to Assistant Director at MIT Media Labs and Center for Civic Media. With specialties that range in a Broad knowledge in life sciences and biotechnology, Web development, and mobile telecommunications, she finds time to be a freelance artist and play the mandolin. 

The Making of an O'Reilly Animal

Lorrie does her rough sketches in pen-and-ink, depicting the animal in different poses. Even after the designer selects a particular sketch, Lorrie may need to re-draw it several times. Once a sketch is accepted, Lorrie then draws a more careful rendering to use as a model in the final process. This detailed sketch is often used for the O'Reilly catalog mock-ups. Since the catalogs are usually printed well in advance of a new title's actual production, it's common for the final book illustration to have a slightly different appearance than the catalog version.

The challenge is that scratchboard requires Lorrie to use her drawing techniques in reverse. "I am literally working backwards," she explains. "Instead of drawing in the shadows, I am scratching out the highlights. The lighter the detail, the more work I have to do."

She typically begins with the animal's eyes, the pivotal feature of the entire image to Lorrie's way of thinking. Once she gets the eyes right, the rest of the drawing begins to fall into place. For the panther on Java Foundation Classes, she worked particularly long and hard at giving the animal an intense stare.

Don't miss the step-by-step making of an O'Reilly animal.

Her first round of scratching yields a basic line drawing. Then she establishes lighter and darker tones as she begins to add detail. If she makes an error, she can patch the ink and re-scratch, but she can't make major changes. Since the scratchboard surface can accommodate only one or two revisions, Lorrie says that she tries to have a complete understanding of what she's going to do and not make any mistakes.

She likens this process to watching a photographic image emerge in developing fluid. Moreover, Lorrie must recognize when the scratchboard image is "finished." After going over her work with an eraser to clean off excess ink and dust, Lorrie creates a high-resolution digital scan.

We love humble over-achievers and the roles they play in our everyday geeky life.  
P.S.
Yes, the tarsier above is blinking at you.