Info@wiperts.com
What kind of Information do Business Networks Gather on us
LinkedIn, Alignable, Beyond, Data.com, E.Factor, Gadball, Gust, Meetup, Opportunity, PartnerUp, Ryze, and others are all social media sites specifically for business networking and entrepreneur networking. These sites offer a different set of tools so that people can connect on a business level and share information, hire, find jobs, freelance. They are more social in nature than GitHub which is for sharing open source code and collaborating on in progress projects. They are somewhat social in that exchanges are made and posts and comments are added, however, they are different from an Instagram or Facebook environment because there is less personal information shared. Profiles highlight business experience and career goals on sites like this, rather than life adventures and other personal information.
Regardless of whether you are sharing business info, or networking for a new job, or hiring new employees or looking for investors for your new company, these sites, like all other social media sites, collect, store, save and sell your data. You won’t be helped by creating a fake or alias account because that would defeat the purpose of using a business networking site. You can change settings so that less of your information is shared on a public forum, and posts are kept private and shared only with your 1st-degree network or whichever level you prefer. Keeping in mind that your data is being shared and sold, you are posting at your own risk. Many people will use the sites to network and then take any further conversations off the site for privacy. That is up to you. There is a messaging service inside many of these networks, but again this information is saved and stored, so message at your own risk. If you don’t want potential saboteurs, nosy networkers, or even spies looking for something to write about having access to your private business conversations, then take them off the website.
A unfortunate result of all this data gathering being done by LinkedIn, Alignable, and other business networks, is that our personal information ends up online. Various websites purchase data from data brokers and use it to create background check or people finder sites. If you find your name and address are online, contact an internet removal service who can show you how to remove your information from the internet. They can also delete information and remove your address from the internet.
