Big news for LinkedIn stalkers: If you keep visiting the page of a potential hire—or ex-romantic partner—you might not be lurking as stealthily as you once were.
LinkedIn is testing a “frequent viewer” feature that allows certain users with LinkedIn Premium to know if someone has looked at their profile multiple times. Krista Mollion, the founder of creative agency Unignorable Brands, first noticed the added detail last month.
“I called it the ‘stalker alert,’” Mollion tells WIRED.
Every few days, Mollion, who has nearly 79,000 followers on LinkedIn, gets a notification to “check out who has viewed your profile.” LinkedIn has long allowed users to see who has looked at their profile. If you pay for LinkedIn Premium, like Mollion, you can access even more details on who has visited your page, including a full list of every viewer over the previous year. But now when Mollion visits the Who Has Viewed Your Profile section, she sees certain people tagged as Frequent Viewers.
LinkedIn confirmed the test but declined to share further information about the feature.
For Mollion, the new insight has been a boon. She runs the names of frequent viewers through Claude, asking the AI to identify any she should be paying attention to. Claude groups the viewers into three groups: friends, people who probably want to sell her something, and business development or sales leads.
Mollion reaches out to those who aren’t trying to pitch her and, she says, nine times out of 10 it leads to a good conversation. One frequent viewer was an organizer looking for speakers for an online summit; another was a host seeing if Mollion was a good fit for their podcast.
“This stalker button—the Frequent Viewer—is a way to capture those invisible lurkers who are considering you for an opportunity,” Mollion says. For the average LinkedIn user, the best-case scenario might be the chance to reach out to a recruiter looking to hire for a new role.
It also lets you know if an unwanted individual—like a former boss or an ex—is keeping tabs on you. Since the frequent viewer feature is triggered by someone looking at your profile, not just seeing your posts or comments in their feed or as the result of a search, it’s a good signal that this person is specifically seeking you out. While LinkedIn tends to be “safe-for-work” compared to other social media platforms, Mollion says that there are “definitely weirdos.” She herself has blocked one frequent viewer.
If you don’t want to show up as a Hinge match’s frequent viewer before a first date, it might be time to change your privacy settings. As a reminder: LinkedIn allows users to peruse profiles in public, semi-private (showing your job title, industry, and school but not your name), or fully private mode. To change your settings, go to Visibility in the Settings and Privacy section, then click Profile viewing options. If you want to stalk in peace and relative secrecy, we recommend Private mode.
The post LinkedIn Is Testing a Feature That Lets You See Your Profile Stalkers appeared first on Wired.
