I finally paid attention to a prompt on my LinkedIn profile asking me to include my postal code on my profile with the outcome being 70% more profile views. From an unsuspecting perspective, this sounds amazing, I mean what job seeker doesnt want more profile views right?
But that’s the exact opposite of the privacy advice given on CV’s - don’t put your actual address, use a general location. Obviously, you could argue that you could also just use a general postcode but the reality here is that majority of people wouldn’t actually reason this way, so they’re more or less setup for failure 
.
In my opinion, it shows that as much as a lot of organisations say “we value your privacy”, the reality doesn’t seem to be the case.
I’m open to other viewpoints on this.
My understanding is that this data is only used to assist with targeted searches, but isn’t displayed publicly anywhere. I seem to recall some reports a few years ago about how the field was leaking in the profile page source, but that got fixed and they also removed the previous postcode search with a geo search that’s less specific.
It’s Microsoft, sooooooo… 
Yeah I remember that. Thanks for bringing this out and clarifying, it’s definitely worth it that it doesn’t get publicly displayed. It still irks me a bit because at the end of the day you still basically handout your postcode.
I recently discovered a new OSINT technique of LinkedIn account enumeration using an email address and it showed just how data flows between LinkedIn and their parent company Microsoft. I’d rather give them less info.
Like you say it is Microsoft
1 Like
The reality is though, MS probably have it already, whether you give it to them intentionally or not
1 Like
