Would it be wise to accept all connection requests on LinkedIn? After all, everyone’s pretty much a professional there, right?

Logically, the answer is no. As long as you’re on social media, blindly accepting all connection requests could potentially open you up to spammers and people who might be looking to scrape off your personal information, which they would then sell to high-paying bidders to make easy profits. Then again, connecting with more people does increase your total network size, granting you additional opportunities to improve the exposure of your posts.

So, to answer the famous question, Social Media Today created a community poll and asked more than 5k people if they would or should accept all requests.

Knock Knock

Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of the participants answered NO. 83% of the respondents say that they do not accept every request to connect. Unfortunately, the remaining 17% do, and they even note in the comments that they do so because they “feel” that it’s a good way to expand their network. One user even answered with rhetoric, remarking “Why shouldn’t I?”

LinkedIn themselves advise that you should only accept connection requests from people that you personally know and trust on a professional level. Though that could be somewhat limiting, it also offers you more protection against potentially harmful online actors. Yes, there is much benefit to expanding your network and contacts, but not at the expense of self-compromise. One can never be too safe when it comes to guarding against the ingenuity of online malefactors.

In fact, in April of last year, a hacker group was found to have been selling an archive of personal data scraped from nearly 500 million LinkedIn users, which included sensitive personal information such as user history, contact numbers, location, etc. The group pulled this off by piecing together the information they were able to acquire on LinkedIn and filled-in gaps by using the information they were able to acquire on other websites and online databases. What’s more concerning is that LinkedIn noted that there was no hacking involved, but that the group accessed information through public and non-public listings, with the latter primarily driven by ‘random connection’ request approvals.

Besides the risk of falling victim to data scavengers, accepting all requests could also backfire on you, especially if no one ends up responding to your posts. Because there are ‘randoms’ and are most likely just fake accounts, the interaction, or lack thereof, would influence LinkedIn’s algorithm to determine that no one wants to see what you share, gradually causing your overall reach and exposure to decline over time.

The Wrap

What’s worse is if randoms end up muting you, which sends waves of negative signals about your posts. While it’s not the most major of concerns, it’s still worth noting if you or someone who’s part of your connection does this because it can potentially interfere with the maximization of your reach and response levels. Regardless of the opinion of others, since there are a ton out there, it’s still the most logical decision to assess all connection requests before accepting.

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