LinkedIn

LinkedIn collects data from sources you never knowingly engaged with — other people's calendars and contacts, third-party websites, Microsoft products, and off-platform tracking — then uses it to infer your age, gender, salary, and career stage.

Your public content and personal data flow freely to Microsoft for its own services and advertising. Third-party advertisers receive hashed identifiers and can re-associate them with data they already hold. Premium customers can export your profile data.

Settings exist for many controls, but you cannot opt out of non-personalised ads, your data is retained after account closure, public profile data persists in external caches indefinitely, and core collection tied to 'legitimate interest' cannot be stopped.

HTTPS is the only security measure named explicitly. Data flows internationally with limited specifics, 'legitimate interest' carries most of the processing load, and AI model training on your data has no opt-out path.