Settings: your account, privacy and security
The settings that are worth changing and the ones most people never find - who can message you, whether you appear in search, two-factor sign-in, and what happens when you delete your account.
What you will learn
- The privacy settings that decide who can reach you
- How to turn on two-factor sign-in
- What profile visibility does, and the one thing it does not do
- What deleting your account actually does
Who can reach you#
These four are the ones worth going through once, properly. They decide how much unsolicited contact you get, and most people never open them.
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Profile visibility | Whether your profile is public. |
| Appear in search | Whether you turn up when somebody searches for people. |
| Allow connection requests | Whether strangers can ask to connect at all. |
| Message permission | Who is allowed to start a conversation with you. |
The usual right answer
Leave visibility and search on - being findable is most of the point of being here - and tighten message permission instead. That cuts the unwanted contact without making you invisible to the people you actually want to hear from.
What profile visibility does not do#
Setting your profile to something other than public keeps you out of search and out of the index. It does not put a lock on the page: somebody who already has your profile link can still open it. Treat it as controlling discovery rather than access, and do not put anything on a profile that you would mind a stranger reading.
Careful
This is the one setting people most often misread. If something genuinely must not be seen, do not put it on the profile - use the places where sharing is per-record, like documents on a company workspace or materials in a deal.
Being seen as online#
Two separate settings, and they do different things. Online status is whether people can see you are here right now; last seen is whether they can see when you were here most recently. Turning both off is reasonable, and worth knowing that it is mutual on most platforms - here, it simply hides yours.
Securing the account#
- Change your password from Settings, then Security. You need your current one, which is what stops somebody who found an unlocked laptop from locking you out
- Turn on two-factor sign-in. This is the single highest-value thing on this page and it takes two minutes
- Turn on login notifications, so you are told when your account is signed into
Two-factor first, everything else after
If you hold the investor or incubation-staff role, your account can reach other people's confidential material - deal documents, applications, cohort data. Two-factor is not optional housekeeping in that situation.
Roles, and what they open#
Roles are in Settings, then Roles. Adding one never removes another, and your primary role is only how you appear by default in search. If a part of the product sends you here instead of opening, that is the reason - add the role and go back.
Deleting your account#
Deletion is a direct action rather than a request somebody reviews. Read that as a warning: it happens, and it is not a support ticket you can call back.
- Anything you own and other people depend on - a community you are the only owner of, a company page, an open job posting - should be transferred first
- Communities can be transferred to another owner; company pages have their own team management
- If you only want to stop being findable, change your privacy settings instead. That is reversible and deletion is not
Careful
Transfer before you delete. A community whose only owner deletes their account is a community nobody can administer.
