Linkelo is a browser extension that gives LinkedIn profiles a score and a tier from S to F. Linkelo is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by LinkedIn Corporation. LinkedIn is a trademark of LinkedIn Corporation.
This page explains what the extension does with data, in plain language. If anything here is unclear, please ask — contact details are at the bottom. For the rules of using Linkelo itself, see Terms of Service.
The short version
- The profiles you rank stay on your computer. Names, photos, job history and links are never sent anywhere — except your own name and your own LinkedIn link, and only if you choose to publish your own profile to the public leaderboard.
- What is sent is a small set of numbers, plus a scrambled version of the profile's web address.
- Separately, and only if you turn it on, Linkelo can send a short code naming a step that failed — never a message, never a web address, never anything about a profile. It is off until you choose it.
- This anonymous sharing is on from the moment you install Linkelo, so tiers reflect real usage from the start. You can turn it off in the settings, and the extension still works. Publishing your name to the public leaderboard is a further, separate choice — never on for you until you choose it.
- Signing in is optional. Without it there is no account at all. If you sign in with Google, Apple or email, your email address and your own settings, progress and score numbers are kept under your account so they follow you to other browsers. The people you rank never are.
- There are no ads, no trackers, and nothing is sold to anyone.
What stays on your computer
When you press Rank, the extension reads the profile and works out a score. All of that happens in your own browser. The following is saved on your computer, using your browser's own storage. If you sign in, a copy of some of it about you is also kept under your account; Signing in and sync below lists exactly which parts. Everything about the people you rank stays here either way:
- The person's name, headline and profile address
- Whether their profile shows a photo and a banner, and whether it is verified. Only the yes or no, never the image itself or its address
- Their work history, education, certifications and languages
- Their score, tier and the six category scores
- Your settings, including which LinkedIn profile is yours if the extension has detected it
- For your own profile only: how many of the recent posts it shows are your own rather than reposts, and the date of each of your own posts it has seen, kept to count how often you post for the tips on the You tab and the Warrior nameplate. Only the dates, never what the posts say, and never read from anyone else's profile
- How many ranks you have used today
- Your progress toward earned nameplates and achievements: how many ranks you have ever performed, in total, and how many publications, certifications, connections and patents your own profile listed the last time it was read cleanly, and which surprise nameplates you have already been shown. These are bare counts and ids, never the entries themselves, and they are never reset, not even by Reset everything, so a nameplate you earned is not taken away with your leaderboard
Unless you sign in, none of this is sent to us. You can delete all of it at any time by opening the extension and choosing Reset everything under the gear icon. Removing the extension also deletes it. Clearing Your profile under Sharing forgets which LinkedIn account is yours without wiping ranks, and also withdraws any nameplate color or header you had chosen from the scrambled address it was showing on.
What is sent to our server
A few things are sent, and how much depends on one setting: Rank against everyone, which has three levels — Off, Anonymous, and Public. Anonymous is where this setting starts when you install Linkelo. Points 1 through 5 below happen at Anonymous and above. Point 6 — publishing your real name and link — only happens at Public, the highest level, which is never chosen for you. Point 7 needs Public; Off and Anonymous both hide those views entirely.
Point 8 is the exception to that sentence, and it is why it is numbered separately: it has a switch of its own, Report failures, which is off until you turn it on. Rank against everyone does not govern it in either direction — sharing scores does not switch it on, and setting that dial to Off does not switch it off.
1. When you rank someone, the extension sends:
| What | Example |
|---|---|
| A scrambled version of the profile's address | 3e0327ee1edf9d… |
| The overall score, from 0 to 100 | 74.2 |
| The Elo number, from 800 to 1600 | 1523 |
| Six category scores | experience, education, certifications, distinctions, network, languages |
| How complete the profile was | high |
| Which version of the scoring math was used | 8 |
| A random ID for your copy of the extension | 9f2c1b04-… |
If you are using a beta build and you rank your own profile, it may also send a stamp named
beta for that same scrambled address. The stamp is only the word beta and a time — still no
name or link. It lets other installs show a Beta nameplate and header on your profile. Founder
profiles are not stamped this way.
2. Whenever your chosen Nameplate finish or Header changes (while the extension knows which
profile is yours), it sends whichever of the two applies for the scrambled address of your own
profile: the finish's name (a metal such as gold, or a material such as a school's own colors), and
the header's name (linkedin-user, or an earned one such as founder). If the finish is a school
material, it also sends whether your education makes you an alum or a current student there, worked
out from dates you already have on the profile — never the raw education text itself. While the
extension is in beta, every finish and header is available to everyone, free — nothing here is
paywalled. This is what lets other Linkelo installs see the finish, header and school status on your
profile — none of it is something applied to profiles you look at yourself, only to your own.
Choosing a different finish or header, or clearing Your profile, each replace or remove what was
sent; nothing is kept there once it no longer describes your choice. A Founder or Beta header is not
sent this way at all — it is worked out independently by every install, the same way the Founder and
Beta nameplates already are.
3. Whenever you rank a profile (while the extension knows which profile is yours), it sends your lifetime rank total — how many ranks you have ever performed — for the scrambled address of your own profile, replacing whatever total was sent before. This is what the Ranker achievement reads, the same way Founder and Beta nameplates already read other marks on your profile. Each Ranker tier needs a set number of lifetime ranks; the extension's You tab shows how many, and how far you are from the next. Warrior is not earned this way: it counts your connections and how often you post, both worked out on this device from your own profile, and neither is ever sent. It only ever names a count, never which profiles it came from, and it stops the moment the extension no longer knows which profile is yours.
4. Whenever you rank a profile, it also sends a coarse, anonymous category worked out from your own education and current role — for example "Virginia Tech" or "Software" — for the scrambled address of your own profile, replacing whatever was sent before. This is the same kind of number- and-hash-only sharing as your score, just grouped by school and field so we can gauge which schools and industries are actually using Linkelo. It never sends the raw text behind the category, and it is never shown to anyone — there is no badge, chip or profile view that displays it. It stops the moment you set Rank against everyone to Off.
5. When you open a LinkedIn profile you have not ranked, the extension sends the scrambled
address to ask whether anybody else has already ranked that person. This is how the extension can
show you their tier without you spending one of your own ranks. It may also ask whether that
scrambled address carries any stamps (for example beta), a nameplate finish, header or school status
its owner has chosen, or a lifetime rank total.
This fifth point is worth being clear about. It means our server receives a record that someone using your random ID looked at that profile. The record is scrambled, and the answer is remembered for a day so the same profile is not asked about twice. But it is still a record of profiles you opened, so you should know it happens. Setting Rank against everyone to Off stops it completely.
6. If you choose Public — the highest of the three levels on Rank against everyone, and never chosen for you — the extension sends your real name, your real LinkedIn profile link, and your current score and tier — not the scrambled address, the actual name and link — so that anyone using Linkelo can see you on a public leaderboard. This is the only feature in Linkelo that ever sends a name or a link, and it only ever sends yours, and only once you choose Public yourself. Moving back to Anonymous or Off removes your entry. See About the people being scored below for how this fits with the rest of this policy.
7. Opening the Rank tab's Public or Schools view reads the public leaderboard, or the average score by school, from our server. Both views need Rank against everyone to be at Public — at Off or Anonymous, they are hidden entirely. Opening either sends your random ID so the request can be rate-limited the same way every other read is, whether or not you have published your own profile. The school-average view never shows a school until at least three people have self-identified with it, so a small school's average can never stand in for one person's score.
8. If you turn on Report failures — a separate switch under Sharing, off unless you
choose it — the extension sends a short code when a ranking attempt fails, so that a version of
Linkelo that has stopped working gets noticed. A report contains four things: the code itself, from a
fixed list of thirteen (for example menu-no-save-item, meaning LinkedIn's "Save to PDF" option was
not where we expected it); which browser the extension is running in; its version number; and your
random ID, so the report can be rate-limited like every other request.
That is the whole of it. There is no message, no error text, no web address, and nothing about the profile you were looking at — not even its scrambled address. This is deliberate, and it is a matter of what a report is able to hold rather than a promise about what we look at: an error message can quote the web address it failed on, and a failed document read can quote fragments of the document, so neither is something a report is built to carry. A code and a hash together would also reveal which profiles you had opened, which is why no report carries one.
We use no third-party crash reporting or analytics service for this or anything else. Reports go to our own server, and only ours.
Signing in and sync
Signing in is optional, and everything above works the same without it. It exists for two things: keeping your own Linkelo the same on every browser you use, and proving which LinkedIn profile is yours, so that only you can change how it looks to everyone else.
What we get when you sign in. With Google or Apple you sign in on their own page, and Linkelo never sees your password. With email there is no password at all: we email you a six-digit code and you type it into the extension. Our backend provider, Supabase, keeps an account record:
- With Google: an ID for your Google account and your email address. Google also passes along your name and the web address of your Google profile picture, which Supabase keeps in the same record. Linkelo never reads or shows either.
- With Apple: an ID for your Apple account and an email address. If you chose Hide My Email, that is an Apple relay address rather than your real one, and Linkelo shows it as it is. Apple may also send your name the very first time you sign in; Linkelo never reads or shows it.
- With email: your email address, and nothing else. If it is the same address as a Google account you also sign in with, Supabase treats the two as one account.
The extension keeps a sign-in token in your browser's storage so you stay signed in. Signing out removes it.
Claiming your profile. Once you are signed in and the extension knows which LinkedIn profile is yours, it links the scrambled address of that profile (see About the scrambled address) to your account. One account can hold one profile, and the first to claim it holds it. From then on, only your account can change the nameplate finish, header and other marks shown on it, and the actual address is never sent, only the scrambled one.
What is kept under your account. Only things about you, and only these:
- Your settings: light or dark theme, the nameplate, header and seal you chose, how the leaderboard is sorted, and the positions of Rank against everyone and Report failures. Each comes with the time you last changed it, so the most recent change wins when two browsers disagree
- Your progress toward earned nameplates and achievements: the same bare counts, post dates and shown surprises listed under What stays on your computer
- Your own score as numbers: tier, Elo, overall score, the six category scores, how complete the profile was, which version of the scoring math was used, and when it was scored
- Your own Elo over time, as numbers and times, up to the last 200
- How many ranks you have used this month and today, so a second browser does not get a fresh allowance
What is never kept under your account: anyone you have ranked; your own name, headline, work history, education, or anything else read from your profile; your LinkedIn address; and whether you have seen the walkthrough or the latest release notes, which belong to each browser. Each sync also sends your copy's random ID, so it is rate-limited like every other request.
Sync does not depend on Rank against everyone: it only ever stores your own data under your own account, and it works at Off, Anonymous and Public alike.
Your earned nameplate and seal. Once your account holds your profile, the earned nameplate you wear and the seal you chose are shown to other Linkelo users on your profile, the same way a chosen finish already is under point 2 above, and only while your own progress still qualifies for them. Wearing something else, or no longer qualifying, removes them. They are only sent while Rank against everyone is not Off; setting it to Off stops further changes from being sent rather than removing what was already sent, and Delete account removes them.
Deleting your account. Delete account in the settings removes your account record, your claim on your profile, everything kept under your account, and your earned nameplate and seal from your profile. The data on your own computer is not touched; Reset everything is still the way to clear that. Reset everything on its own does not delete your account: while you stay signed in, your score and Elo history come back from your account at the next sync. Your settings and progress were never cleared by it in the first place.
Your share card
The share icon on your card in the popup's You tab draws an image of your own score: your tier, your Elo, your name, your six category scores and the nameplate you wear. It is drawn inside your browser and only ever shows your own profile, never anyone you have ranked. Nothing about it is sent to us. Copy image puts it on your clipboard, Save PNG saves it to your computer, and Post on LinkedIn opens LinkedIn's own post box with a line of text already filled in. Whether anything is posted, and what, is up to you, on LinkedIn.
What is never sent
- Names, headlines, photos or profile links — except your own name and your own LinkedIn link, and only if you set Rank against everyone to Public yourself. This is the one exception to everything else on this page, and it never applies to anyone but you and never happens without that explicit choice.
- Job history, education, certifications, distinctions, network figures or languages
- Anything about you: no email, no account, no login, unless you sign in yourself, as described under Signing in and sync
- Your IP address is not stored by us. Our hosting provider may see it briefly, as any website does.
About the scrambled address
The scrambled address is made by mixing a secret word into the profile's address and running it through a one-way math function called SHA-256. The result cannot be turned back into an address by itself.
We want to be honest about the limit of this. Anyone who has both the secret word and a list of LinkedIn addresses to try could check whether a particular person is in our database. The secret word is inside the extension, so it is not truly secret. Scrambling protects the data if our database were ever stolen, and it stops anyone reading the database from seeing a list of names. It is not a promise that a determined person could never work out who a row belongs to.
The scrambled address exists for a practical reason, not only a privacy one: it lets us count a profile once even when fifty different people rank it.
Where the data is kept
Scores are stored in a Supabase database hosted in the United States (region us-west-1). Supabase
also runs sign-in: account records and everything kept under an account live in the same database.
If you sign in with email, the code is delivered by Resend, an email delivery service, which receives
your address and the message only to send it. Those two are our only outside service providers. If you are in the UK or the EU, this means your data is
sent outside your country.
If you sign in with Google or Apple, whichever you chose also knows that you signed in to Linkelo, as it does for any site you sign in to with them. That is between you and them, under their own privacy policies.
We do not use any analytics service, advertising network, or third-party crash reporting service. The failure codes described in point 8 go to the same Supabase database and nowhere else, and only if you turn that setting on.
How long it is kept
Scores are kept for as long as the extension is running, because they are what the tiers are calculated from. Daily usage counters are deleted automatically after seven days. A public leaderboard entry is kept until you turn its setting back off — there is no separate expiry for it. Failure codes are kept while they are still telling us something about a version people are running; there is no automatic expiry, and they are deleted on request like anything else. An account, and everything kept under it, is kept until you delete it with Delete account.
Your choices
To stop sharing entirely: open the extension, click the gear, and set Rank against everyone to Off. Nothing further is sent about any profile, in either direction, and your tiers will then use fixed thresholds instead of comparing against everyone else. If you have also turned on Report failures, turn that off too — it is a separate switch on purpose, so that neither one quietly changes the other.
To leave the public leaderboard but keep sharing anonymously: set Rank against everyone back to Anonymous. Your entry — name, link and score — is removed immediately, and your score keeps being shared the same way it was before you chose Public.
To delete what you have already sent: each score is saved with the random ID belonging to your copy of the extension. You can find that ID in the settings, under Data & help. Email it to us and we will delete every score, and every failure code, that came from your copy. We will confirm when it is done.
To stop syncing: choose Sign out under Account in the settings. Nothing further is sent or received for that browser. What is already kept under your account stays there until you delete the account.
To delete your account: choose Delete account, then Delete for good. Your account and everything kept under it is removed at once. If you cannot sign in any more, email us and we will delete it for you.
To delete everything on your computer: choose Reset everything under the gear icon. If you were on the public leaderboard, this also removes your entry and returns Rank against everyone to Anonymous, since that entry is the one thing on our server that is actually tied to your name.
Please note that deleting your local data does not remove scores you have already shared, because there is no link between the two. Signing in does not create one in our database either: the scores you contribute when you rank people are stored with your copy's random ID, never with your account. Requests made while signed in carry that same random ID for rate limiting, so we do not promise the two could never be connected by someone reading our server's request logs, only that we do not connect them. If you want both gone, ask us to delete your shared scores as well.
Children
Linkelo is not intended for anyone under 16.
About the people being scored
Linkelo scores real people who have not agreed to be scored. It is meant for private, personal use. Please do not use it to publicly rank, shame or embarrass anyone.
The one exception is the public leaderboard, and it is a narrow one: a profile only ever appears there because the person it names chose to publish it themselves, by setting their own Rank against everyone to Public. Nobody who has merely been ranked by someone else — including you — can appear on it. If you believe an entry does not actually belong to the person it names, email us and we will review it.
If you are a LinkedIn member and want any score relating to you removed, email us. We can remove it, though you will need to tell us your profile address so we can find the right row.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is sent or how it is used, the date at the top will change, and the change will be noted in the extension's release notes.
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Write to us about anything on this page: a score you want removed, everything from one browser deleted, or a question about how any of it works.