LinkedIn Stalking: When Ex-Partners Monitor Your Profile

LinkedIn has transformed from a purely professional networking site into a platform where ex-partners frequently monitor each other's career progress, creating complex privacy and emotional challenges. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn's design notifies users when someone views their profile, leading to embarrassing confrontations between former lovers. The platform's freemium model creates a hierarchy of privacy, where paid subscribers can browse anonymously while free users risk exposure. Users report discovering ex-partners viewing their profiles months or even years after breakups, sometimes involving family members in the surveillance. The situation creates a difficult balance between maintaining professional visibility for career opportunities and protecting personal privacy from unwanted attention. While some view this monitoring as harmless curiosity, others experience genuine distress, particularly when dealing with former partners who exhibited controlling behavior. The issue highlights how the blurring lines between personal and professional life in the digital age create new challenges for maintaining boundaries after romantic relationships end.

LinkedIn's notification system has created a unique form of social embarrassment that doesn't exist on other platforms. Branda Statman, a 25-year-old brand manager living in Phoenix, experienced this firsthand when she repeatedly checked on ex-partners and potential romantic interests without using private browsing mode.

The platform automatically notifies users when someone views their profile, leading to uncomfortable conversations. Statman was called out by several men after she viewed their profiles, though she managed to frame her actions as due diligence in modern dating. A more difficult situation occurred when her mother viewed a potential suitor's profile a couple of years ago.

"Sometimes, I overshare with my mom," Statman admitted. When the man confronted her about the profile view, she initially claimed she had been browsing on her mother's phone. "It was totally just my mom looking and stalking," she later acknowledged.

Unlike Instagram or Facebook, where users can generally browse without detection unless they accidentally engage with content, LinkedIn's professional focus makes such surveillance more obvious. The platform was designed for labor, not love, but the lines between personal and professional have blurred significantly.

Other users shared similarly mortifying experiences:

• One woman accidentally sent her ex-mother-in-law a connection request after a divorce
• A man discovered his cheating ex checked his profile on his birthday
• An ex from nearly a decade ago left a nasty comment on a post
• Someone used LinkedIn to verify if Tinder matches actually worked at claimed employers

For Statman, the story had a somewhat positive resolution. The man her mother had stalked ghosted her after a few months of dating, but texted years later to apologize. He had seen her doing well on LinkedIn and they discussed rekindling their romance, though he ghosted again. He still follows her on the platform.

LinkedIn operates on a freemium model that creates a two-tiered system of privacy and visibility. Users can create profiles and access basic features without charge, but advanced privacy controls require payment. This creates what some describe as a web of spies and spy-catchers paying for varying levels of anonymity.

At the unpaid level, users can see information about who viewed their profile, but only if they agree to let others see when they've viewed those profiles. Higher-tiered subscriptions allow users to browse in incognito mode, making their profile views invisible to others.

Dakota Rae Lowe, a 30-year-old advertising professional in New York, deals with this dynamic after a messy breakup. Her ex posted a mirror selfie on LinkedIn, which she found cringeworthy, prompting her to post a subtweet about it. Months later, she still catches him shamelessly viewing her profile.

"Can he not afford Premium?" Lowe questioned, referring to the paid invisible-browsing tier. "I pay for Premium, because I'm not going to be embarrassed like that."

The visibility trade-off is particularly challenging because LinkedIn ties professional visibility directly to career opportunities. Users must balance maximizing exposure to potential employers and recruiters against maintaining personal privacy from unwanted observers.

Kevin Grunewald, a 40-year-old Texas-based recruiter, experienced this after a short-lived relationship ended in 2022. He initially thought things ended amicably, but then noticed the woman he dated was viewing his LinkedIn profile almost daily.

"It was part of her morning ritual, I guess," Grunewald said. She began liking his posts and messaging him, eventually showing up at his house multiple times. "I think she blocked me," he said, "which I'm kind of happy about."

What begins as personal monitoring can extend to family members and escalate into more serious concerns. Gina Gacad, a 31-year-old communications professional in New York, noticed the mother of her college boyfriend lurking on her profile years after their breakup.

The timing coincided with news that her ex was seeing someone new. "I just wonder if they were trying to size up the new girlfriend," Gacad said. She noted that parents are often the problem in these situations, being less digitally savvy and more willing to search without restraint on LinkedIn.

Gacad acknowledged she isn't above LinkedIn prowling herself. After an ex belittled her about her job, she checked his profile when his employer had layoffs to see if he was affected. "He was let go, which was unfortunate, but also he was being a dick," she said.

For some, the monitoring crosses into threatening territory. Amanda Brooks, 30, moved to Spain in 2023 and met a man on Hinge who wouldn't accept her refusal of a second date. She blocked him on social media, but a year later he followed her on LinkedIn, liking her posts and regularly checking her profile. She blocked him there too.

A more severe case involved an anonymous woman in her 30s whose former partner's harassment included waiting outside her home and confronting her father at his workplace. He threatened to have her fired for smoking marijuana. Though she's now happily married and living abroad, she recently noticed her ex's father viewing her LinkedIn profile.

"His dad is retired, so there's not really a reason for him to be on there," she said. "It does have me kind of wary of posting on there. Who knows what other family members might try to look? Or other people he might know?"

This creates a professional dilemma, especially for those in recruiting or seeking employment. DA, another anonymous source currently job hunting, worries that limiting LinkedIn information to avoid ex-partner surveillance will hurt her prospects.

"There's this huge push for people to be LinkedIn influencers and everything to be noticed by employers, and that's been really hard for me," she said. "It's not like I'm afraid of being judged for putting myself out there, I'm afraid of being stalked and this guy having too much information."

The platform has evolved significantly from its original purpose of verifying resume information. LinkedIn now encourages users to become LinkedIn influencers, creating pressure to share even minor work achievements publicly. This expectation of constant professional visibility creates tension with personal privacy needs.

Brooke Erin Duffy, a social media researcher and associate professor at Cornell University, explains the conflict: "We've all been socialized to think that putting yourself out there is a route to potential success and career windfall, but at the same time, putting yourself out there opens you up to risks of hyper visibility."

Rosanna Bellini, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at NYU who researches technology's impact on stalking and intimate partner violence, notes that LinkedIn lacks the fine-grained privacy controls common on other platforms. "What's really unusual about LinkedIn is that you don't have these fine-grained elements of control," she said.

Additionally, there's social pressure against incomplete profiles. "On LinkedIn, everything's pretty location-based," Bellini explained. Recruiters want location information, and employers need to know about office attendance. "There's an enormous amount of pressure on individuals to be as visible as they possibly can to be recruitable," meaning missing information directly affects employability.

Psychologically, monitoring ex-partners post-breakup can be harmful. Research shows it heightens distress, increases jealousy, and hinders recovery. Jaime Bronstein, a licensed clinical social worker and relationship therapist, emphasizes that intent matters.

"If you're going to do a reachout, it's just a way to gather some information in an innocent way," Bronstein said. However, if someone in a relationship checks old flames, it may indicate relationship dissatisfaction. "No message is a message," she added regarding ex-partners who have cut contact.

Some avoid LinkedIn searches entirely to prevent emotional setbacks. Holly Benjamin, a 32-year-old marketer from Boston, considered looking up an ex from over a decade ago but worried it could trigger a yearlong spiral given their history involved a restraining order.

"It's so natural to be curious about where people ended up, but LinkedIn is the only platform where that curiosity can feel a little risky," Benjamin said. "A neutral action becomes something that has a lot more thought behind it."

Not all stories end negatively. Lisette Hall, a 42-year-old marketer in Chicago, reconnected with a high school classmate on LinkedIn in 2023 after 20 years without contact. Despite friends advising her to ignore the request, she accepted it, and they eventually married. He chose LinkedIn specifically because he thought it would be the least creepy way to reach out.