A LinkedIn feature that allows paid subscribers to see a list of visitors to their profile should be available for free to all EU users to comply with the region’s General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ), according to a legal complaint filed by digital rights group None of Your Business (NOYB) . The complaint was filed this week in an Austrian court, with the group arguing that LinkedIn’s ‘ Who Viewed Your Profile ’ feature violates Article 15 of the GDPR, which covers a subject’s right to access their own data.
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NOYB has a history of confrontations with tech companies. In 2025, Google was fined 325 million euros by the French data protection authority, CNIL, over its data collection and advertising policies after the group complained.
LinkedIn began offering users the ability to see who has viewed their profile around 2007, later turning the feature into a paid perk, a move that predated the arrival of GDPR in 2018. According to NOYB, this commercialization left non-subscription users in a bind. Profile visitor data should legally be accessible to EU citizens under GDPR, but when they request it via a formal Data Subject Access Request (DSAR), LinkedIn denies access, citing data protection.
However, if the user subscribes to a LinkedIn Premium Career plan that starts at 30 euros per month, the same data suddenly becomes accessible.
“It is particularly absurd that LinkedIn is using an alleged ‘data protection interest’ as an argument to deny the right to access data under the GDPR,” NOYB’s press release argued. In NOYB’s view, LinkedIn’s policy is contradictory. The company is restricting access to something that should legally be free because providing access would undermine the incentive to pay.
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In her view, LinkedIn's policy of charging for access to this data is illegal and the company should be fined to deter future violations.
LinkedIn will undoubtedly point out to the Austrian Data Protection Authority that all users, including free subscribers, can choose not to have their visit to someone else's profile visible by deactivating the function in Settings/Visibility/'Visibility when viewing other profiles'. Then every visit a user makes to another profile is recorded as one by an 'Anonymous LinkedΙn User'.
Free users can also see the last five visitors to their profile, as long as those users have not opted into this anonymity setting. It is possible that the company will further argue that, under Article 15, users’ rights to know who has viewed their data conflict with other users’ rights to maintain their own privacy.
When asked for a response, a LinkedIn spokesperson sent the following statement: “This claim [by NOYB] is false. Not only is it inaccurate that only Premium members can see who has viewed their profile, but we also comply with Article 15 of the GDPR by disclosing the information in question through our Privacy Policy.”
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If NOYB prevails, LinkedIn could be ordered to stop disclosing profile visitors or, alternatively, make it available for free in response to DSARs.
