We at XING give our members all the tools they need to manage their online identity themselves. Please refer to the Help section und and the XING Blog for more information.

The most important tip we can give you is to be vigilant. As a business network, XING is a trustworthy environment for you to do business and communicate with experts, colleagues, and other members,  but, just like in real life, always take care whatever you do. If a member you don't know offers you large sums of money for a service, then it may well be risky. If someone sends you links to websites in a language you don't speak, then it could be dangerous. So when using XING, take the same amount of care as you would in a real-life situation.

Think about what you want to write and post - not just in your profile, but also when communicating with others and in groups as this is linked to your name.

Only enter your phone number and address in the designated fields. If you enter this data in the "Wants"/"Haves" or even the "company name" fields, which are visible to everyone, then this information is available to the exact same extent as if you were to write this information on a piece of paper and stick it to your front door.

At XING you can choose which contact data should be visible to which specific member and whether the member is allowed to contact you. To this end, you can define a standard (and change it again at any time) containing the bare minimum of contact data such as an email address. You can of course edit your data sharing settings again at any time.

Spend a bit of time reviewing your privacy settings where you can define whether your profile is also visible beyond the platform and can be found by search engines such as Google or Bing. Past experience shows that by searching for your name, your XING profile will appear high up in the list of results, which is also a good opportunity to showcase your online business card. You can however choose not to do this at all and only be visible on the XING network. Premium Members can also see who visited your profile.

You can also decide whether entries you post in public groups can be found by search engines. Your personal visibility settings also have priority over those the moderator defined for the group.

Not only that, you can choose whether to make your contact list visible and whether you want to be contacted via the guestbook and receive XING messages. If you want, you can fully activate or deactivate external messages.

At XING you can choose which contact data should be visible to which specific member and whether the member is allowed to contact you. To this end, you can define a standard (and change it again at any time) containing the bare minimum of contact data such as an email address. You can of course edit your data sharing settings again at any time.

Never give your login data to third parties and make sure you use a secure password, i.e., not too short and including lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers and special characters. Do not use the name of your child, the place where you live, or the word "password". We recommend you also change your password from time to time.

Get an impression of how your profile appears to others by using one of two options. The first is the "profile preview" option in your profile which shows you how your profile looks for non-contacts.

If you have allowed search engines to find your profile, then you can also view your profile from a logged-out perspective by searching for yourself in a search engine by entering your name followed by the word "XING". Your profile will be one of the first few hits, so you can click on it to see your profile from the perspective of those accessing it via a search engine.

Do you suspect a XING member of being up to no good? If so, then there are a number of ways in which you can let us know. You can inform us right away when you receive contact requests, messages and from the profile page. On top of that, you can also use the contact form to get in touch with us.