Do You Comply with the LinkedIn Terms of Use?

So I mentioned in my last post that I had a semi-heated discussion with a LinkedIn connection after we disagreed about my open question.

At first he was concerned that I would log in to my client’s LI profiles to post their information, which he pointed out is a violation of the Terms of Use Agreement that everyone agrees to when they sign up. No problem, I only post things to their profiles by connecting them to a feed system using an application that LI allows. I don’t even write the material that I post, my clients do. I simply do the data entry portion for the application, and the system does the rest. Check.

Then he pointed out that my own profile was not in compliance with the TOU from LinkedIn. WHAT? How could that be? I did everything right … at least I thought I did. He pointed out that I had my email address listed in an area that was not a designated field. That was true. I did. He mentioned that this violated section 10B4 of the TOU agreement … “Include information in your profile or elsewhere, except in designated fields, that reveals your identity or sensitive personal information such as an email address, phone number or address or is confidential in nature”
I had read that to mean that my privacy would not be protected if I posted my email address outside of a designated area. I was fine with this so I left it where it was. It seems that this error could breach my TOU with LinkedIn. Interesting! I removed it and I feel better already! (I am sooo not a rule-breaker!)

This made my connection discussion start to ease up a bit. He was impressed that I cared enough to make the change. It wasn’t that I was trying to break the rules, I had only misunderstood the jargon. Anyway from there we became friends again *haha* and he actually gave me another great tip to make my profile look more professional.

Stay tuned – I’ll let you know what that tip is next time … so you can do it to your profile too!

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