I did not know that people were creating a QRcode for their LinkedIn profile pages. That isn’t surprising, as QRcodes are an easy way to display a URL – point your phone camera at one and you will see its destination. Click that button and your phone browser opens the URL.
I don’t network much with strangers, but if you do, here is the easiest way I could find. No need to search Google, at least in Windows, for the option seems to be built into Chrome. Many of the online sites need you to sign up before you can download the code.
Steps
Go to your LinkedIn profile page. You can reach it by clicking Me > My Profile in the top menu.
Right-click a blank area, not an image and you will see the option to create a QRcode for this page. Click that option
Download the QRcode and use it on your website, business card or elsewhere.
LinkedIn profile pageQRcode for my LinkedIn profileQRcode as seen in a phone camera.
From time to time, people discover that Facebook has become aware of their visits to other websites and freak out. Is that a concern, or is it part of the web experience? To understand this, check your own Facebook account:
Off-Facebook Activity entry pointExpanded view of the sites you visited
At this point, it’s best to use Facebook’s own words:
What is off-Facebook activity?
Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organisations share with us about your interactions with them. Interactions are things such as visiting their website or logging in to their app with Facebook. Off-Facebook activity does not include customer lists that businesses use to show a unique group of customers relevant ads.
How did Facebook receive your activity?
When you visit a website or use an app, these businesses or organisations can share information about your activity with us by using our business tools. We use this activity to personalise your experience, such as showing you relevant ads. We also require that businesses and organisations provide notice to people before using our business tools.
How activity is shared with Facebook
Jane buys a pair of shoes from an online clothing and shoe shop.
The shop shares Jane’s activity with us using our business tools.
We receive Jane’s off-Facebook activity and we save it with her Facebook account. The activity is saved as “visited the clothes and shoes website” and “made a purchase”.
Jane sees an ad on Facebook for a voucher for 10% off her next shoe or clothing purchase from the online shop.
I can’t tell you what to do, but I have two choices – do nothing and see relevant ads, or clear this history and choose not to let Facebook get this information from third parties. See the images above for a link to do the latter. Choosing the second option does not mean you will not see ads; you will see less relevant ads.
So what did I do?
I decided to investigate. Yes, I did visit those websites – at least the first few of the 500+ listed. Then I noticed my own business site CRM911 Digital. That got my attention, for I have no Facebook presence for that business and have certainly not installed any tracking tags on it.
So I checked the WordPress plugins there:
Akismet Anti-Spam
Child Theme Configurator
Cloudflare
Elementor
Far Future Expiration Plugin
Imagify
jQuery Updater
PWA for WP
Simple Basic Contact Form
Site Kit by Google
The SEO Framework
Wordfence Security
WPSSO Core
WPSSO Inherit Parent Metadata
WPSSO Organization Markup
WPSSO Place and Local SEO Markup
WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup (Premium)
WPSSO Update Manager
The SEO Framework has a setting for selecting a default image should your site be mentioned on Facebook. Yes, I had chosen one, but the page source code showed no link to Facebook. I have no tracking pixels.
So why does my own site show up in my Off-Facebook Activity?
I might have found the answer, in the form of a Chrome extension called Keyword Surfer, made by SurferSEO. Its Privacy Policy says:
Your personal data may be transferred to entities cooperating with SURFER sp.z o.o. , in particular entities providing IT services and support, and entities providing to Surfer sp.z o.o. services in the field of PR, to accounting and IT companies serving us, as well as to all institutions defined by applicable law, in particular to Tax Offices and, if necessary, to entities providing archiving services.
Source: https://surferseo.com/privacy-policy/
Or it could be one of many other extensions I use. I will disable them one by one to find a likely source.
Meanwhile, I have disconnected the data connection.
Deletion of off-Facebook activity.Managing future data connectionsThis is the last stepRandom ads will show now.
Reading Time: 2minutesA lot of articles about tightening up Facebook security are flooding my Facebook news feed. I knew that one needs to check one’s Privacy and other settings frequently, but here is an interesting conundrum. I noticed that my setting for the Platform API was on, even though I recall turning it off at some time.
Reading Time: 2minutesArmaan Kapur is a 21-yo writer in New Delhi who did something that many middle-class Indians do — try to go to Starbucks India (Link to Facebook page) in Connaught Place, New Delhi. In Australia, you don’t normally admit that you drink that brand of coffee, and most of their outlets were closed down (Link to an ABC article) in 2008. So what went wrong?
Reading Time: 3minutesLinkedIn has thousands of discussion Groups, where actual discussion seems to be minimal. There was a time when a given topic had one or two groups, but now a popular topic will have hundreds of identical competitors. Anyone can create their own groups. Numerous small businesses (and some larger ones) have done this.
Why do people create LinkedIn Groups?
Most people in the workforce know that the Internet is a cheap way of reaching out to millions of people. At one extreme is the pastime of spamming those millions, but that’s the province of shady folks who go to great lengths to remain anonymous. At the respectable end, known as marketing, you need a large list of contacts, so you can promote your messages, being the owner of a discussion group.
So you create a LinkedIn group and call it, say, Internet Marketing, or E-Commerce, or Marketing Communications and so on. It doesn’t matter if someone else has a group with a similar name, but it cannot contain “LinkedIn”. If you’re into SEO, you have only 3143 other groups that appear to cover that topic.
Reading Time: < 1minuteFor nearly a week I could not get anything out of the Twitter website, i.e. http://twitter.com. I tried to click the links of people who were following me, but without fail, Twitter kept responding, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”. It didn’t matter if I tried the handles of some famous people — they all did not exist. An appeal to @twitter fell on deaf ears: Continue reading →
Reading Time: 4minutesUnlike the majority of LinkedIn users, I pay for my account and I advertise there (as do my clients), so I have a lower tolerance to lax quality control within LinkedIn.
Fake Accounts
I used to belong to some SEO discussion groups (inside LinkedIn) when I noticed that Halle Berry was a participant, except that this was a blonde with the most implausible profile and a strong interest in SEO and techy topics (based on her group activity). I complained to LinkedIn customer service and they replied saying that they didn’t see anything amiss. This Halle is still an active account. Continue reading →
Reading Time: 2minutesWhile browsing through my Tweetdeck, I couldn’t help noticing the @NAB search column nearly full of praise from customers and retweeters. Disclosure: I consulted to this division of NAB (i.e. Direct Banking, which includes social media management) until a few months ago and I am still consulting to UBank at a different location.
Recent Twitter activity from the Big Four banks. (click to enlarge)
Reading Time: 2minutesAnyone can start up a free Twitter account from http://www.twitter.com and can register from the home page. Registration is easy: the fields required for initial setup are:
I don’t want to focus on the Indian tweeter, who