LinkedIn

Is LinkedIn safe?

LinkedIn is safe enough to keep a professional profile on, and it has far less harassment than general social networks. The risks are about data and fraud. Your profile and activity feed an advertising business that Ireland's regulator fined €310 million in 2024. Your posts and profile train AI unless you switch it off. And because people on LinkedIn expect to hear from strangers about jobs, it is one of the easiest places for scammers and state-backed hackers to make first contact. We score it 48/100, a little above Facebook (37) and X (37).

The €310 million fine

On 24 October 2024 Ireland's Data Protection Commission announced a final decision against LinkedIn Ireland, after a complaint first made to France's regulator in 2018. It found that LinkedIn had no valid legal basis for analysing members' behaviour and targeting ads. Consent for using data from third parties was not "freely given, sufficiently informed or specific". Relying on legitimate interests or on the contract with members also failed. The decision added a reprimand and an order to bring processing into line with GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary.

LinkedIn appealed in November 2024. Microsoft's annual report of July 2026 says a preliminary hearing was held in December 2025 and the court has ruled on the standard of appeal, a ruling the regulator may appeal. The fine stands until a court says otherwise.

What LinkedIn knows and shares

Apple's App Store label for LinkedIn has no "used to track you" section, but the list of data linked to you for third-party advertising is long: purchases, other financial information, coarse location, name and email, contacts, your posts and messages to support, search history, identifiers and usage data. Precise location and "sensitive info" are also collected for personalisation.

AI is the newer issue. Since late 2024 LinkedIn has used profile data, posts, articles, saved job application answers and resumes to train generative AI models, with the option to opt out. Members in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland were told on 3 November 2025, and LinkedIn says their data is not passed to Microsoft for AI training without further notice. Private messages and members it believes are under 18 are excluded.

Breaches and scraping

The real breach was in 2012, when attackers stole 164.6 million email addresses and passwords stored as unsalted SHA-1 hashes, most of which were easily cracked. It surfaced for sale in 2016. Since then the problem has been scraping. In 2021 sellers offered a large set of data taken from public LinkedIn profiles and other sites, widely reported as covering about 700 million people. LinkedIn stated it was "not a data breach" and that no private data was exposed. Have I Been Pwned found 125.7 million unique emails in it, and another 19.8 million in a 2023 scrape. The practical effect is the same: your name, job and email are in phishing lists.

Fake recruiters and North Korean job scams

LinkedIn's best feature for job hunters, strangers who want to hire you, is also its main risk. Bitdefender described in February 2025 how North Korea's Lazarus Group used LinkedIn messages offering part-time remote work on a crypto exchange project. After asking for a CV, the "recruiter" sent a code repository to review that, once run, installed malware stealing browser logins and crypto wallet data on Windows, macOS or Linux. Other campaigns use the same opening and then ask candidates to run a "coding test".

Ordinary job scams are more common: fake openings that ask for an upfront fee, "training equipment" payments or ID documents before any interview. LinkedIn offers free verification badges for identity and workplace, which help, but scammers also hijack real accounts.

Settings worth changing

1. Settings > Data privacy: turn off "Data for Generative AI Improvement".
2. In the advertising data settings, switch off the use of your profile and activity for ads, including data from partners.
3. Turn on two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary with an authenticator app.
4. Limit who can see your email address and connections in the visibility settings.
5. Never run files, code or apps sent by a recruiter, and never pay to apply.

How we scored it

Transparency and control (60) is LinkedIn's best factor: the AI and ad settings exist and are reasonably easy to find, even if the defaults favour LinkedIn. Privacy (38) reflects how much data is linked to you for advertising and the default AI training. The regulatory record (40) rests on a single large GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary fine, still under appeal. Work chat inside companies is a different risk; see Microsoft Teams.