Last updated: September 7, 2026
Linkelo is a browser extension that gives LinkedIn profiles a score and a tier from S to F.
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.md.
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 only, using your browser's own storage:
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 Shared ranking 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.
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.
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 exists so a future badge for reaching a rank milestone could be shown on your profile the same way Founder and Beta nameplates are today; nothing reads it yet. 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.
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.
Scores are stored in a Supabase database hosted in the United States (region us-west-1). Supabase
is our only outside service provider. If you are in the UK or the EU, this means your data is sent
outside your country.
We do not use any analytics service, advertising network, or crash reporting service.
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.
To stop sharing entirely: open the extension, click the gear, and set Rank against everyone to Off. Nothing further is sent, in either direction. Your tiers will then use fixed thresholds instead of comparing against everyone else.
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 Rank against everyone. Email it to us and we will delete every score that came from your copy. We will confirm when it is done.
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. If you want both gone, ask us to delete your shared scores as well.
Linkelo is not intended for anyone under 16.
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.
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.
Email: 1606underground@gmail.com
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.