Our colleague across-the-pond, Russell White of Premier Consultants, released an important post this morning to lay out the concerns he has with the top online destination of enterprising executive talent: LinkedIn.

So what is Russell’s beef with LinkedIn? It is that the social network has jeopardized the privacy of its more than 200 million users worldwide.

From his post:

Russell White is founder and managing partner of London-based Premier Consultants. He is The Green Suits, LLC’s strategic partner for international executive search.

There has been discussion on the Linkedin AnswerHub concerning privacy, which is clearly worthy of attention. A number of people are being ‘stalked’ on Linkedin, but, unlike Facebook and other social media sites, it is impossible to block individuals from viewing one’s profile and indeed [if they choose] from sending the person a message.

I was interested in this because at the end of last year, I wrote an unpublished post about improvements Linkedin must make or face either censure, loss of usage or serious competition from other web based services. [There are around a dozen more things that I wrote about that I think the site needs to implement to increase its value as a ‘go to’ business tool and I did forward these to the CEO of Linkedin in a letter form but never got a reply!]

Privacy was one of the elements covered. I took the approach around why people may want to be contacted, who could see their profile, and what information individuals show on there as well as sharing certain elements. For example, I heard of a situation last week where an employee connected with this line manager on Linkedin when he joined the company. Sometime later, the line manager was looking at his Linkedin Update Feed and saw that the employee had changed his profile to say he was seeking new career opportunities. The line manager naturally spoke to the employee who was suitably embarrassed! Obviously this scenario is not as serious [although it could be] as being stalked, but it highlights how not having control of one’s privacy on the internet [or controlling it properly] can have dire consequences.

The essence of this discussion is that Linkedin should provide a lot more functionality to allow people control over who can see their profile and for what reason. If this is an ‘expensive’ exercise, then Linkedin could charge or add it as an additional service for their Premium members and generate more income. As more people become concerned about their privacy online then the current practise will inevitably reduce individuals’ usage of LinkedIn. It must be disconcerting for the Linkedin members who are being stalked and whose only recourse is to remove their profile altogether.

Well said, Russell. Well said.

Are you too concerned about the privacy of your information on LinkedIn? Let us know your thoughts in the comment thread.