Because we can’t go anywhere online without some social network tracking our data and using it to cash in on targeted advertising, LinkedIn has created its own online ad network that will allow advertisers to follow you around the web based on the information that LinkedIn knows about you.

BusinessInsider reports that the new LinkedIn Network Display service is selling ads not just on the career-oriented networking site but on 2,500 other sites, using data on LinkedIn’s 347 million registered users to carve out niches of as few as 1,000 users for advertisers to target, according to AdAge.

So if an advertiser wants to target a certain type of professional, like senior-level insurance executives in Connecticut, LinkedIn could serve up ads to people fitting that bill on the thousands of sites using its new network.

LinkedIn claims that advertisers will not have access to any identifying data about the users it targets. So while the ad-buyer would be assured that its ads are being seen by those senior-level insurance executives in Connecticut, it supposedly won’t know that Jimmy Jimson Jr. of Stamford is one of those execs.

How do you opt out? Good question, as LinkedIn’s privacy controls are a bit convoluted.

Log in to LinkedIn. Go to the top-right of the page and select “Privacy & Settings” from the account settings drop-down box. Then go down to the bottom of that page and click on the “Account” tab, then select “Manage Advertising Preferences.”

This will bring up a window. You’ll see that you’ve likely been automatically opted into allowing LinkedIn to use cookies to track your online behavior. Uncheck that box and save your changes.

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