In short
Agreeing to a Connection and disclosing information about yourself are two separate decisions. You can hold a Connection for years having shared nothing but a display name, and you can change that at any point without breaking anything.
The detail that catches people out: disclosure is set per relationship and per direction. There is no global privacy setting to get right once, and nothing you reveal to one party is visible to, or inferable by, another.
On this page
- Two decisions, not one
- The fields, and what each one is for
- Where each kind of Connection starts
- Per relationship, per direction
- Reading the consent screen
- When an organization asks for more
- Changing your mind afterwards
- What is not private on either side
- Symptoms, causes and fixes
- Things people commonly get wrong
Two decisions, not one
Most services fuse these together. Signing up is handing over an email address; the account and the disclosure are the same act, and undoing one means undoing the other.
Here they come apart. Consent to the Connection answers “may this channel exist at all”. Disclosure answers “what does the other end see about me”. Because a Fusion binding already lets the platform recognize you without any of your details, the second question can be answered later, differently for each relationship, and changed as often as you like.
That is the whole design in one sentence: you become recognizable without becoming identifiable, and then you choose where to become identifiable.
The fields, and what each one is for
| Field | What the other side gets | Worth sharing when |
|---|---|---|
| Display name | The handle you go by — not necessarily your real name | Always. On person-to-person Connections it is shared and cannot be switched off, because a conversation with nothing to call you by is unusable |
| Name | Your actual name, as you have entered it | The relationship needs to match you to a real record — ownership, a claim, a booking, an account they already hold |
| Email address | Your email address | You want to be reachable outside the App, or the service genuinely sends documents |
| Phone number | Your number | Someone may need to call you — a colleague, a tradesperson, a delivery. Rarely necessary for a brand |
| Photo | Your profile picture | Person-to-person, where recognizing a face is the point. Almost never needed by an organization |
Where each kind of Connection starts
| Field | Organization to person | Person to person |
|---|---|---|
| Display name | Off unless you choose it | Always on — the floor for a peer conversation |
| Name | Off | Off |
| Email address | Off | Off |
| Phone number | Off | Off |
| Photo | Off | Off |
In other words: brand Connections start with nothing shared, and person-to-person Connections start with a name to address you by and nothing more. Neither default was chosen for tidiness — they are the floors the platform enforces, so that forgetting to check a setting cannot cost you anything.
Per relationship, per direction
Disclosure is also one-directional. What you reveal to somebody and what they reveal to you are independent settings, held on their own sides. Sharing your phone number does not request theirs, does not notify them to reciprocate, and does not entitle you to it.
Reading the consent screen
When you connect to an organization, the App shows you a screen before anything is shared. It is worth actually reading, because it contains four things you cannot infer later:
- Who it is — the organization's name and logo. Brands on the platform are identity-checked, which means this really is that business, not that Linxy recommends it.
- What they are asking to see — the individual fields, with anything mandatory already ticked and locked.
- What kind of verification they require — their admission floor, in plain words.
- How the channel is protected — the protection level applied to messages in this channel.
Person-to-person Connections have a smaller equivalent: you see who is asking, how you met — scanned your card, tapped your tag, used your code, used your invitation link — and any short message they sent with the request. You accept or decline. Your display name goes across and nothing else, whatever you decide about the rest afterwards.
When an organization asks for more
An organization can require a minimum level of verification before it will hold a channel. This is not the same as asking for your details — it is asking how sure the platform is that a real, accountable person is present. The console shows these as four levels:
| Level as shown | What it means in practice | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Anyone (device only) | No account needed. A device interacted; no person was verified | Public information, marketing, general content |
| Signed-in app users | The person is using the Linxy App with an account | Ordinary conversation, saved history, follow-up |
| Verified (Fusion) | A Fusion binding exists — a real person, a real device, confirmed by biometric | Ownership, support that touches an account, anything worth impersonating |
| Verified + shared ID details | As above, and a name and email address are required — both are ticked for you and cannot be unticked | Claims, regulated services, anything that must be matched to a named individual |
If you do not meet the floor, one of two things happens, depending on how the organization set it up. Either you are offered a limited channel and invited to step up when you are ready, or the channel does not open. In both cases you are told before you have shared anything.
Changing your mind afterwards
Open the Connection and adjust the fields. Nothing about the channel breaks, no message history is lost, and the other side is not sent an announcement. From that moment they see the new set.
Two honest caveats. Turning a field off stops future access to it; it does not reach into what somebody already read, wrote down, or copied into their own systems while it was on. And if the Connection exists at all only because an organization's floor required a name and email, withdrawing those is effectively leaving the Connection — the right action is to end it, which is a single, clean step.
What is not private on either side
| Visible regardless | Why |
|---|---|
| How the Connection was made — scan, tap, code or invitation link | It describes the encounter, not you, and it is the context that makes a request answerable |
| Which touchpoint you arrived through | The owner already knows what they put in the world; this tells them which piece worked |
| That a Connection exists, and when it was made | Both parties can see their own list. Nobody else can see either list |
| The organization's identity, on a brand Connection | Deliberately not symmetrical. An accountable institution does not get to be anonymous to the individual it is serving |
| Your display name, on a person-to-person Connection | The conversational floor. There is no anonymous peer chat |
The name you are shown under, and how it updates
The name each side sees is resolved when the list is drawn, not copied once at the moment you connected. That has two consequences worth knowing. First, a name you set under How you appear in Settings takes effect on every Connection at once, and it is not governed by the sharing controls above: it is a publication rather than a disclosure, and it wins over anything else the other side would otherwise be shown. Second, where you have not set one, what they see follows the rules on this page — your account name where you have shared it, otherwise the handle you go by. Connections made before this behavior existed showed a name captured at the time; setting a name in How you appear is what brings those up to date. A nickname the other person has given you on their own side is theirs and is not changed by any of this. See How you appear.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| An organization asks for your name every time you write in | Nothing is disclosed on that Connection, so their console has nothing to show their staff | Share the name field on that Connection, or keep answering — both are legitimate |
| You cannot untick a field on a consent screen | The organization's floor requires it | Accept it or decline the Connection. There is no override |
| You shared a field and the other side still cannot see it | You changed the wrong direction — you edited what they show you | The control you want is the one labeled as what they can see about you |
| A peer shows only a display name | That is the default and they have not changed it | Ask them. There is no way to request fields from your side |
| You revoked a field and they still have your number | Revocation is forward-looking; they had already read it | Expected. Treat disclosure as one-way once it has happened |
| Your display name cannot be turned off on a peer Connection | It is the enforced floor | Change the display name itself if you would rather be known differently |
Things people commonly get wrong
Related reading: Types of Connection, What Fusion actually means, Private channels and message privacy, Managing Connections in the console, and Ending a Connection.