Let’s paint a realistic picture. Suppose you block John Smith. John Smith is sitting at his computer, logged into his LinkedIn account, and tries to view your profile. Here is exactly what he sees in 2021:
From his perspective, it looks like you deleted your entire LinkedIn account—except he might suspect blocking if your profile appears normally when he logs out.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, but unlike personal social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, the stakes are different. You aren’t just sharing vacation photos; you are sharing your career trajectory, workplace, and professional connections. Let’s paint a realistic picture
This raises a critical privacy question: If you block a former boss, a toxic colleague, or a spammy recruiter, can they still see your profile?
If you are looking for the short answer: No. When you block someone on LinkedIn, they lose almost all access to your profile. From his perspective, it looks like you deleted
However, the long answer contains a few important "loopholes" and exceptions that you need to know about to protect your privacy effectively.
Here is the comprehensive breakdown of what happens when you block someone on LinkedIn in 2021. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, but
LinkedIn in 2021 allowed users to control the public visibility of their profiles. Many professionals kept their profiles partially public to appear in Google search results for networking purposes. If you had your profile set to "Public" (or "Visible to everyone"), a blocked user could theoretically bypass the block entirely by:
In this scenario, the blocked user would see whatever you had designated as public—typically your name, headline, current position, and location. They would not see your full profile (connections, recommendations, activity), but they could see enough to identify you. The block only operates within LinkedIn’s logged-in environment; it does not force Google to remove its cached snapshots. (LinkedIn did request removal of some pages, but caching delays were common.)
After blocking, go to Edit public profile & URL and change your custom URL (e.g., from /in/john-doe to /in/johndoe2021). This breaks any saved direct links the blocked user might have.
No — when you block someone on LinkedIn (including in 2021) they can no longer view your LinkedIn profile or interact with you on the platform; they’re effectively hidden from each other.