Your Privacy Matters

To create an account on LinkedIn, you must provide us with at least your name, email address and/or mobile number, and a password and agree to our User Agreement and this Privacy Policy, which governs how we treat your information. You may provide additional information during the registration flow (for example, your postal code, job title, and company) to help you build your profile and to provide you more customized services (for example: language-specific profile pages, updates, content, more relevant ads and career opportunities). You understand that, by creating an account, we and others will be able to identify you by your LinkedIn profile. We may also ask for your credit card details if you purchase certain additional services.

We also provide the option to register for a SlideShare account, for which you must provide at least your name, email address and/or mobile number, and a password. We no longer provide the option to register for a separate Pulse account, but you may continue to use your existing Pulse account if you already have one.

After you create an account (other than the distinct SlideShare and Pulse accounts), you may choose to provide additional information on your LinkedIn profile, such as descriptions of your skills, professional experience, and educational background. You can list honors, awards, professional affiliations, Group memberships, networking objectives, companies or individuals that you follow, and other information including content. Subject to the settings you choose, your connections may provide recommendations and endorsements of you. Providing additional information enables you to derive more benefit from our Services by helping you express your professional identity; find other professionals, opportunities, and information; and help recruiters and business opportunities find you. It also enables us to serve you ads and other relevant content on and off of our Services.

On SlideShare, you can choose what personal information you provide in addition to the information required for registration as noted above. Most of your SlideShare profile, as well as all content that you post on SlideShare, is publicly displayed (with the exceptions provided in the SlideShare account settings), so please do not provide personal information you would not want to be public. We may use and share information you provide in a SlideShare profile and/or Pulse account in the same manner as the information provided in a LinkedIn.com profile, in accordance with this Privacy Policy and our User Agreement.

You may use our address book or “contacts” importer (or other similar features) to upload your address book into our Services. We store this information (including phone numbers) and use it to help you manage and leverage your contacts in connection with our Services. We also use this information to enhance your experience with our Services by helping you to grow your network by: identifying your contacts that are already Members of our Services; providing a template to send invitations on your behalf to your contacts that are not Members; and suggesting people you may know (even if not in your contacts) but are not yet connected with you on our Services (as we may infer from your shared connections or shared managers, employers, educational institutions and other such factors). We may also use this information to show you and other Members that you share the same uploaded contacts who may or may not be Members.

Please note that when you send an invitation to connect to another individual on our Service (a “connection”) or to join our Service to connect with you, that person may have access to your email address or, for SMS invitations, mobile number because it may be displayed in the invitation. After sending these invitations, we may also remind your invitees of your invitation on your behalf. Your LinkedIn connections will also have access to your email address.

We make other tools available to sync information with our Services, and may also develop additional features that allow Members to use their account in conjunction with other third-party services. For example, our mobile applications allow you to sync your device’s calendar, email and/or contacts apps with our Services to show you the LinkedIn profiles of meeting attendees, email correspondents and/or your contacts.

Another example are software tools that allow you to see our and other public information about the people you email or meet with and leverage our Services to help you gain insights from and grow your network. If you grant these products (mobile applications or our other Services that sync external email and calendar services, such as “LinkedIn Connected”) permission to access your email and calendar accounts, they will access and may store some of your email header and calendar history information. Our products that sync with external email services may also temporarily cache message content for performance reasons, in a way that is unreadable by us and our service providers.

Any information that you upload or sync with our Services is covered by the User Agreement and this Privacy Policy. You can remove your information at your convenience using the features we make available or in accordance with Section 3. You can remove your address book and any other synced information at any time.

When you contact our customer support services (e.g. on our Help Center and SlideShare’s Help Center), we may have to access your InMails, Groups and other contributions to our Services and collect the information we need to categorize your question, respond to it, and, if applicable, investigate any breach of our User Agreement or this Privacy Policy. We also use this information to track potential problems and trends and customize our support responses to better serve you. We do not use this information for advertising.

We collect information when you use (whether as a Member or a Visitor) our websites, applications, our platform technology (such as “Share on LinkedIn” plugins for publishers) or other Services. For example, we collect information when you view or click on ads on and off our Services, perform a search, import your address book, join and participate in groups, participate in polls, install one of our mobile applications, view content on Pulse or SlideShare, share articles on our Services and apply to jobs through our Services. If you are logged in on LinkedIn.com, SlideShare.net, the Pulse app or another Service or one of our cookies on your device identifies you, your usage information and the log data described in Section 1.10 of this policy, such as your IP address, will be associated by us with your account. Even if you’re not logged into a Service, we log information about devices used to access our Services, including IP address.

You allow us to receive information when you use your account to log in to a third-party website or application. Also, when you visit a third-party site that embeds our social plugins (such as “Share on LinkedIn” for publishers) we receive information that those pages have loaded in your web browser. If you are logged in as a Member when you visit sites with our plugins, we use this information to recommend tailored content to you. We will use this information to personalize the functionality we provide on third-party sites, including providing you insights from your professional network and allowing you to share information with your network. Our retention of this data is addressed in Section 3.2. We may provide reports containing aggregated impression information to companies hosting our plugins and similar technologies to help them measure traffic to their websites, but no personal data. Please note that SlideShare.net, Pulse.me and the Pulse app are part of the LinkedIn Services, not third-party sites or applications.

You also allow us to receive information about your visits and interaction with the sites and services of our partners that include our cookies and similar technologies, unless you opt out. If you are not a Member, we rely on the online terms between you and our partners.

As described in our Cookie Policy, we use cookies and similar technologies, including mobile application identifiers, to help us recognize you across different Services, learn about your interests both on and off our Services, improve your experience, increase security, measure use and effectiveness of our Services, and serve advertising. You can control cookies through your browser settings and other tools. By visiting our Services, you consent to the placement of cookies and beacons in your browser and HTML-based emails in accordance with this Privacy Policy, which incorporates by reference our Cookie Policy.

We target (and measure the performance of) ads to Members, Visitors and others both on and off of our Services through a variety of ad networks and ad exchanges, using the following, whether separately or combined:

• Advertising technologies on and off of our Services, like web beacons, pixels, ad tags, cookies, and mobile identifiers as permitted by mobile platforms;
• Member-provided profile and contact information and categories (for example, “product managers in Texas”);
• Information inferred from a Member‘s profile (for example, using job titles to infer age, industry, seniority, and compensation bracket; or names to infer gender);
• Your use of our Services (for example, your search history, the content you read on SlideShare or Pulse, who you follow or is following you on SlideShare, Groups participation, which pages you visit, your clicking on a LinkedIn ad, etc.) and log files generated as described in Section 1.10;
• Information from 3rd parties (e.g. advertising partners, publishers and data aggregators) which we use in addition to the information from our cookies (and similar technologies), your profile and use of our Services.

We do not share your personal information with any third-party advertisers or ad networks for advertising without your separate permission. Note that, as described in Section 2.6, your profile is visible to other Members and through public search depending on your settings. Also, advertising partners may associate personal information collected by the advertiser directly from you with our cookies and similar technologies. In such instances, we contractually require such advertisers to obtain your explicit opt-in consent before doing so.

We may show you sponsored content in your network update stream (NUS), which will be designated as sponsored content and will behave like other NUS updates. If you take social action (for example, if you “like” or “comment” on the sponsored content), your action may be seen by your network and other Members who are shown the sponsored content after you have acted on it. Please note that all social actions on SlideShare (e.g. liking certain content, following or being followed by others) are public, unless expressly specified otherwise with respect to premium accounts.

We adhere to the self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), DAA Canada and the European DAA. If you wish to not receive targeted ads from most third party companies, you may opt-out by, as applicable, clicking on the AdChoice icon in or next to the ad or by visiting http://www.aboutads.info, https://www.youronlinechoices.eu (Europe) or https://www.youronlinechoices.ca/choices (Canada). Please note this does not opt you out of being served advertising. You will continue to receive generic ads or targeted ads by companies not listed with these opt-out tools. You can also opt out specifically from our use of cookies and similar technologies to track your behavior on third party sites. For non-Members, this opt out setting is here.

When you visit or leave our Services (whether as a Member or Visitor) by clicking a hyperlink or when you view a third-party site that includes our plugin or cookies (or similar technology), we automatically receive the URL of the site from which you came or the one to which you are directed. Also, advertisers receive the URL of the page that you are on when you click an ad on or through our Services. We also receive the internet protocol (“IP”) address of your computer or the proxy server that you use to access the web, your computer operating system details, your type of web browser, your mobile device (including your mobile device identifier provided by your mobile device operating system), your mobile operating system (if you are accessing LinkedIn using a mobile device), and the name of your ISP or your mobile carrier. We may also receive location data passed to us from third-party services or GPS-enabled devices that you have set up, which we use to show you local information (for example, Pulse articles about your area or jobs postings in your location) on our mobile applications and for fraud prevention and security purposes. Most mobile devices allow you to prevent real time location data being sent to us, and of course we will honor your settings.

In the case of our Android apps, you will be provided notice of the types of data (e.g. location) that will be sent to us. If you choose to use our app after this notice, we process this data to enable registration or preview product features for you (e.g. jobs near you). If you choose not to become a Member, we will delete this information.

We communicate with you through email, notices posted on the LinkedIn websites or apps, messages to your LinkedIn inbox, and other means available through the Services, including mobile text messages and push notifications. Examples of these communications include: (1) welcome and engagement communications - informing you about how to best use our Services, new features, updates about other Members you are connected to and their actions, etc.; (2) service communications - these will cover service availability, security, and other issues about the functioning of our Services; (3) promotional communications - these include both email and InMail messages (InMail messages are only delivered to your LinkedIn InBox), and may contain promotional information directly or on behalf of our partners, including job opportunities and information from companies that are hiring. These messages will be sent to you based on your profile information and messaging preferences. We track the open rate of your InMails to provide your InMail acceptance score. You may change your email and contact preferences at any time by signing into your account and changing your LinkedIn or SlideShare email settings. You can also opt out of promotional messages by sending a request to LinkedIn Help Center.

Please be aware that you cannot opt out of receiving service messages from us.

Many communications that you initiate through our Services (for example, an invitation sent to a non-Member) will list your name and primary email address in the header of the message. Messages you initiate may also provide the recipient with aggregate information about your network (for example, how many people are in your network). Other communications that you initiate through the Services, like a request for an introduction, will list your name as the initiator but will not include your personal email address contact information. Once you have connected with an individual, regardless of who sent the invitation, your contact information will be shared with that individual.

We use automatic scanning technology to help protect you and other Members. Such technology checks links and other content in your InMails, network updates and Group contributions to help us identify and block malicious links and malware, reduce spam and optimize the delivery of our Services.

We use information and content that you and other Members provide to us to conduct research and development for the improvement of our Services in order to provide you and other Members and Visitors with a better, more intuitive experience and drive membership growth and engagement on our Services and to help connect professionals to economic opportunity.

We also customize your experience and the experiences of others on our Services. For example, when you sign in to your account, we may display the names and photos of new Members who have recently joined your network or recent updates from your connections and companies you follow. We try to show you content, such as news and presentations, that is relevant to you, your industry, or your profession. We also use Members information and content for invitations and communications promoting our Services that are tailored to the recipient.

We may share your personal information with our affiliates (meaning entities controlled by, controlling or under common control with LinkedIn) outside of the LinkedIn entity that is your data controller (for example, LinkedIn Corporation may share your information with LinkedIn Ireland, or other LinkedIn operating entities) as reasonably necessary to provide the Services. You are consenting to this sharing.

We combine information internally across different Services. For example, SlideShare may recommend better content to you based on your LinkedIn content preferences and the articles you read on Pulse, and LinkedIn could present you a better tailored network update stream based on your SlideShare activity, whether or not you tied your SlideShare, Pulse and/or LinkedIn accounts (e.g. by signing in SlideShare or Pulse with your LinkedIn account), as we may be able to identify you across different Services using cookies or similar technologies.

We offer a “public profile” feature that allows you as a Member to publish portions of your professional profile to the public Internet. This public profile will be indexed and displayed through public search engines when someone searches for your name. You may choose the parts of your profile that search engines index or completely opt out of this feature in your LinkedIn account settings, or limit the publicly visible information in your SlideShare profile. However, third-party search engines may not automatically update their caches, which may contain old public profile information. Unless you delete them, your profiles on LinkedIn.com and our corresponding app or on SlideShare.net are always viewable on the respective Services.

The visibility of your professional profile to other Members depends on your degree of connection with the viewing Member, the subscriptions they may have, their usage of the Services, access channels and search types (e.g. by name or by keyword). For example, first degree connections can see your full profile and contact information. Others have more limited access, as detailed in our Help Center. Please note that recruiters and other such professional subscribers can see your full profile even if you did not approve their InMail.

We do not rent or sell personal information that you have not posted on our Services, except as described in this Privacy Policy. We will not disclose personal information that is not published to your profile or generated through engagement with our other services, such as Groups and Company Pages, except to carry out your instructions (for example, to process payment information) or unless we have your separate consent, unless we have a good faith belief that disclosure is permitted by law or is reasonably necessary to: (1) comply with a legal requirement or process, including, but not limited to, civil and criminal subpoenas, court orders or other compulsory disclosures; (2) enforce this Privacy Policy or our User Agreement; (3) respond to claims of a violation of the rights of third parties; (4) respond to Member service inquiries; or (5) protect the rights, property, or safety of LinkedIn, our Services, our Members, Visitors, or the public. See Section 2.14 for additional details about our compliance with legal requests for information.

We support middleware providers that offer archiving solutions to firms subject to legal and regulatory archiving requirements, which, with your permission, facilitate the archiving of your communications and other activity by a third party for compliance purposes. Content distributed through our sharing features and third-party integrations may result in displaying some of your personal information outside of our Services. For example, when you post content to a Group that is open for public discussion, your content, including your name as the contributor, may be displayed in search engine results.

Also, if you have opted to bind any of your Service accounts to your Twitter, Facebook or other similar account, you can easily share content from our Services to these third party services, in accordance with your account settings (which you may change at any time) and respective policies of these third parties. Further, we allow third parties to look-up profile information (subject to your privacy settings) using your email address or first and last name information through its profile API (see Section 2.7. below).

Third parties (for example, your email provider) may give you the option to upload certain information in your contacts stored with us onto their own service. If you choose to share your contacts in this way, you will be granting your third party provider the right to store, access, disclose and use your these contacts in the ways described in such third party's terms and privacy policy.

We collaborate with and allow third parties to use our developer platform to offer services and functionality in conjunction with our Services. These third-party developers have either negotiated an agreement to use our platform technology or have agreed to our self-service API and Plugin terms in order to build applications (“Platform Applications”). Both the negotiated agreements and our API and Plugin terms contain restrictions on how third parties may access, store, and use the personal information you provide to us.

If you choose to use a Platform Application, you will be asked to confirm acceptance of the privacy policy and user agreement of the third-party developer. To revoke permission granted to a Platform Application, please visit your settings. Note, however, that even if you revoke the permission granted to a Platform Application, your connections may still be using the Platform Application, so the Platform Application may still have access to certain information about you, just as your connections do. You may opt out of providing information to third-party developers through your connections by accessing the “Turn on/off data sharing with third-party applications” control in the “Groups, Companies, and Applications” tab under settings.

Polls and Surveys may be conducted by us, Members, or third parties. Some third parties may target advertisements to you on the results page based on your answers in the poll. We or third parties may follow up with you via InMail regarding your participation unless you have opted out of receiving InMail messages. We may use third parties to deliver incentives to you to participate in surveys or polls. If the delivery of incentives requires your contact information, you may be asked to provide personal information to the third party fulfilling the incentive offer, which will be used only for the purpose of delivering incentives and verifying your contact information. It is up to you whether you provide this information, or whether you desire to take advantage of an incentive. Your consent to use any personal information for the purposes set forth in the poll or survey will be explicitly requested by the party conducting it. We are a member of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (“CASRO”) and abides by CASRO guidelines for market research. You may opt out of participating in surveys by changing your settings to stop receiving these inquiries and requests.

You can search for Members, employment opportunities, information about companies, and community content from Groups on our Services. For example, you can find Members with particular expertise or experience, or Members that you may know from your industry or profession. You can also find employment opportunities and information about companies. You can also find content from Groups, SlideShare and Pulse. We use personal information from our Services, including Member profiles, Groups content, and Company Pages, to inform and refine our search service.

If you participate in Groups, share content on your network update stream, or import a blog or other content, you should be aware that any information you choose to disclose using these services can be read, collected, and used by other Members in these forums, developers, and other third parties, including advertisers. We are not responsible for the information you choose to submit in these forums. Your Groups contributions are typically searchable on our Services and some content in Groups may be public and searchable on the Internet if the group owner has not closed the group for public discussions. You can identify closed groups by the padlock icon next to the group name. You can remove your Groups posts at any time. However, others may have copied and used the information that you shared.

2.11. Testimonials and Advertisements Placed through LinkedIn Ads

If you provide any testimonials about our goods or services or place advertisements through the LinkedIn Ads, we may post those testimonials and examples of advertisements you place in connection with our promotion of these services to third parties. Testimonials and advertisements may include your name and other personal information that you have provided. For more information about LinkedIn Ads, please see the LinkedIn Ads Terms of Use.

We offer customized people-search functionality along with organizational and communications tools (including activity alerts) as part of our talent recruiting, marketing and sales solutions. These services allow subscribers - generally, enterprises and professional organizations - to export limited information from Members’ public profiles, such as name, headline, current company, current title, and location (for example, San Francisco Bay Area), in order to effectively manage candidate sourcing. You may limit or prevent such subscribers from exporting your profile information by configuring your public profile visibility settings to restrict access to these fields. We do not provide email or other contact information to these subscribers. However, if you post that information as part of your profile it will be available to them and others. A recruiter or other such subscriber may also manage and store information it has independently obtained about you outside of our Services, such as a resume, in connection with our platform. Any personal information obtained independently of our Services will not be added by us to your profile and is not under our control but is subject to the policies of our recruiting, marketing or sales solution subscriber. We store such information on behalf of such subscriber who can remove it at any time. We do not further process such information.

Certain pages on the Services are public (e.g., company and college pages), and any communications or information shared through them will be accessible by the entity that created them. If you follow a person or organization, you will be listed among its followers, which can be viewed by others including the page owner. We use aggregate information about followers and viewers to provide data about such pages’ performance (for example, visits and updates).

It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information, profile information, or information about your activities as a Member or Visitor when required by law, subpoena, or other legal process, whether in the United States, Ireland, or other jurisdictions, or if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (1) investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (2) enforce the User Agreement, investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations, or protect the security or integrity of our Service; or (3) exercise or protect the rights, property, or safety of LinkedIn, our Members, personnel, or others. We attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their personal information when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. In light of our principles, we may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but do not commit to challenge every demand. To find out more about how we engage with government requests for data see our Law Enforcement Data Request Guidelines.

We may also disclose your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of the assets of LinkedIn Corporation, a subsidiary, or division, or as the result of a change in control of the company or one of its affiliates, or in preparation for any of these events. Any third party to which we transfers or sells our assets will have the right to continue to use the personal and other information that you provide to us in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy.

We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Services (e.g. maintenance, analysis, audit, marketing and development). These third parties have limited access to your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated to LinkedIn not to disclose or use it for other purposes.

LinkedIn.com and SlideShare.net have been awarded TRUSTe's Privacy Seal signifying that this Privacy Policy and its practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with TRUSTe's program requirements.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this Policy, you should first contact LinkedIn. If contacting us does not resolve your complaint, you may raise your complaint with TRUSTe by Internet, by fax at 415-520-3420, or mail to TRUSTe Safe Harbor Compliance Dept. (click for mailing address). The complaint should include the name of company, the alleged privacy violation, your contact information, and whether you would like the particulars of your complaint shared with the company. The TRUSTe dispute resolution process shall be conducted in English. The TRUSTe program only covers information collected through www.linkedin.com, and does not cover information that may be collected through downloaded software or Plugins.

We comply with the U.S.-E.U. and U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Frameworks as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal data from European Union member countries and Switzerland. We have certified that it adheres to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view LinkedIn’s certification, please visit http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/.

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make significant changes in the way we treat your personal information, or to the Privacy Policy, we will provide notice to you on the Services or by some other means, such as email. Please review the changes carefully. If you agree to the changes, simply continue to use our Services. If you object to any of the changes to our terms and you no longer wish to use our Services, you may close your account(s). Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account. Using our Services after a notice of changes has been communicated to you or published on our Services shall constitute consent to the changed terms or practices.

California Civil Code Section 1798.83, known as the “Shine The Light” law, permits our customers who are California residents to request and obtain from us a list of what personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year and the names and addresses of those third parties. Requests may be made only once a year and are free of charge. Under Section 1798.83, we currently do not share any personal information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.