Awkward! How your Tinder matches could be popping up as professional suggestions on LinkedIn

Whilst catching up with my friend he was telling me how some of his Tinder matches started to become "People you may know" suggestions on LinkedIn.  He was shocked as one of the ladies he was speaking to who claimed to be single was actually married.

Turns out, the LinkedIn app has a feature, turned on by default, which used contacts, including phone numbers, uploaded by LinkedIn users to suggest connections with those contacts who also belong to the professional networking site.

The site reads "Members who already know your phone number can discover and connect with you. If they’ve uploaded their contacts list to LinkedIn, and you appear in that list, we may show you to them in Connections or People You May Know."

Like many apps discussed in other articles, LinkedIn is no different to Facebook or SnapChat: it harvests phone numbers and e-mail addresses from your phone’s memory to suggest and connect you with those individuals.

Here are some options for you to consider to prevent your professional network finding out about your personal life in this way:

1. Do not include your phone number on your LinkedIn account.  This is the easiest way to avoid the need to play with settings.  Go to Accounts –> Settings –> Contact Info, and you will see what is visible only to your connections, and what is visible to everybody on LinkedIn.

2. If you want your personal phone number on your profile, limit the LinkedIn members who can see it.  It is set to “all LinkedIn members” by default, but you can change it to people in your 1st and 2nd degree network (and the people they are connected to), or to 1st degree connections only. Keeping it just to your 1st degree contacts can largely eliminate the issue.  Even if you are connected to someone and speaking with them using another method without realising who they are, they would have to suspect this already and click on your profile.

I contacted LinkedIn and they assured me that it is not possible to search for a contact by phone number.

3. Separate your communications, using a different phone number for extracurricular activities. That may require another phone.