LinkedIn vs Facebook

LinkedIn collects not just profile data, but usage, device, location, message metadata, partner data, employer/school data, and off-site interaction data. This creates a detailed profile of your professional activity and browsing-related behavior.

Your profile, activity, inferred traits, and tracking technologies may be used to target and measure ads both on LinkedIn and elsewhere. There are settings to limit some ad uses, but the advertising system is broad by default.

If LinkedIn causes harm, its direct liability is generally capped at the fees you paid or US$1,000, and it excludes many indirect damages. That can significantly limit practical remedies for account, data, or service problems.

Users can request deletion, correction, restriction, objection, access, and a machine-readable copy of their data. These are meaningful privacy controls, especially for users in stronger-rights jurisdictions.

LinkedIn states that closed-account data is generally deleted within 30 days and the profile usually becomes hidden within 24 hours. That is more concrete than many platforms’ vague retention language.

LinkedIn says it may use personal data to develop, improve, and train AI models and generate inferences about you. That can include activity and other service data beyond what users may expect from a networking platform.

You keep ownership of your posts, but LinkedIn gets a worldwide, transferable, sublicensable license to use, modify, distribute, and display them without compensation. Some copies or sublicensed uses may persist after deletion.

Paid subscriptions renew automatically unless you cancel before the renewal date. LinkedIn may also continue billing stored payment methods and fall back to secondary payment methods if provided.

The supplied terms point disputes to courts rather than mandatory arbitration. EU/EEA/Swiss users also keep local consumer protections, which is more favorable than many large tech platforms’ dispute clauses.

LinkedIn can change its terms and privacy policy, and continued use counts as acceptance. It promises no retroactive changes and usually gives notice of material changes, which softens the risk somewhat.

Even after account closure, some content may remain visible to others, search caches may persist, and LinkedIn may retain data for legal, security, fraud, or de-identified uses. Users should not assume total erasure of everything they shared.

LinkedIn says it does not share personal data with non-affiliated advertisers except in limited cases such as hashed identifiers, user permission, or already-public profile data. This is better than an outright statement of selling full personal data to advertisers.

Meta collects a very broad range of data, including activity, device details, contacts, location, cookies, and partner data, even in some cases without an account. In practice, using Facebook can involve tracking across devices, services, and third-party sites.

Your personal data is used to target and measure ads on and off Meta products. This means your behavior and inferred interests help shape advertising across Facebook's ecosystem.

You keep ownership of your posts, photos, and videos, but grant Meta a worldwide, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free license to use and modify them for service operation. This is a broad permission that continues until content is fully deleted.

Meta can use your name, profile photo, and ad-related actions next to sponsored content without paying you. Your social activity may therefore be used to endorse ads to others who can view that activity.

Public posts and profile information can be copied, reshared, downloaded, or indexed off-platform, including by search engines and third parties. Once something is public, practical control over it can be hard to regain.

Apps and websites connected through Facebook Login or integrations may access non-public information, and may retain data you already shared even after access expires. That creates ongoing privacy exposure outside Meta's direct control.

Facebook is provided 'as is' and Meta disclaims warranties while limiting liability for indirect and consequential damages as far as law allows. If the service causes losses or disruptions, user remedies may be narrow.

The policy expressly provides rights to access, correct, download, port, erase, object, and complain to a regulator. These are meaningful user protections, especially in regions covered by data protection law.

Consumer disputes are generally governed by the law of your home country and can be brought in competent local courts. This is more user-friendly than mandatory arbitration or exclusive foreign forum clauses for consumers.

Deleting content or an account is not immediate: primary deletion may take up to 90 days, with up to another 90 days for backups, and some data may be kept longer for legal or safety reasons. Users should not expect instant erasure.

Meta says it does not sell your personal data to advertisers or share direct identifiers like your name or email without specific permission. That reduces one common privacy risk, though substantial ad profiling and reporting still occur.

Meta says it will usually give at least 30 days' notice before material terms changes take effect. That gives users some time to review changes and decide whether to keep using the service.