_Part 10 of 18 in the Digital privacy for board directors series._
The board director's public exposure is not optional. The role is, by design, a regulated and public one. Companies House is a public register. The corporate website lists you. Investors and stakeholders are entitled to know who is on the board. The annual report lists you. The press releases list you.
This is not bad. Most of it is necessary. It does mean that for any board director, the starting position of public exposure is higher than for an ordinary adult, and that the privacy work of this post is not about hiding but about deciding what stays public and what does not need to be.
The five public starting points
For any UK board director, the following are public on the day they take the role.
Companies House. Full name, month and year of birth (since 2016, the day is redacted), nationality, occupation, country of residence, an address for service (which can be the firm's registered office), and the full list of current and former directorships. Anyone, anywhere, can pull this for £0 from the Companies House search.
The corporate website. Photograph (usually), short biography, sometimes contact details. The biography is often written by the corporate communications team and includes more detail than is strictly necessary.
The annual report. A more detailed biography, often including university, previous senior roles, current external directorships, professional memberships, sometimes age and tenure.
LinkedIn. What you have put there yourself, plus what is inferable from your connections and endorsements.
Press releases, conference appearances, op-eds, podcast appearances. Everything you have published or appeared in is archived and searchable, often forever.
The aggregate of these five gives any reasonably motivated researcher a quite complete picture of your professional life, your physical movement patterns (conference circuits, board meeting cycles), your residential area, and increasingly your family situation. None of these sources is hostile. The aggregate is the issue.
Where to do the work
Three places offer real return.
One: the Companies House registered address. When you become a director, the form asks for a service address. This is the address where official correspondence will be sent and which appears on the public record. The default for many directors is to enter their home address. This is not necessary, and for any director whose firm has a registered office, the firm's address is the right choice. If you have already entered your home address, you can change it via the CH01 form. Half an hour of work.
Two: the corporate biography. This is written by the corporate communications team and is therefore reviewable. The standing biography should include what is required (name, role, professional qualifications, relevant experience) and not what is not required (specific previous employers if they are operationally sensitive, current location to street level, family details, hobbies that publicly identify children's schools). Ask the corporate communications team to send you the current biography for review. Edit it.
Three: LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the place most board directors over-share, partly because the platform is designed to encourage it. The principle of deliberate exposure applies most strongly here. The biography should match what is in the annual report. The connections do not all need to be public (LinkedIn allows you to set this in settings). The activity feed (likes, comments, shares) is visible to all your connections by default; consider whether you want that to be the case.
The opposite of the work
Three things that are often suggested and that I think are usually counter-productive.
Removing your LinkedIn entirely. For some senior public figures this makes sense; for most board directors it does not. LinkedIn is, for the role, useful. The exposure is manageable.
Asking Companies House to suppress your name. Mostly not possible. The Section 243 application for personal information protection is reserved for cases of serious risk of violence or intimidation. Most directors do not meet the threshold.
Removing every historical press appearance. Not realistic. The internet does not work that way, and the effort is better spent on what is current and forward-looking.
The harder dimension: what your role tells about your family
This is the dimension the typical executive privacy guidance misses. The visibility of the director also produces visibility of the family, indirectly. The director's biography in the annual report often mentions a spouse or marriage; the corporate event photographs sometimes include partners; the school speech-day photograph in the local paper might include a child. Each is innocent. The aggregate is a map.
The defences here are not technical. They are mostly conversational:
- When the firm's communications team is preparing a profile, ask them not to mention family.
- When the firm hosts a public-facing event, decline to bring family to the photographed portions.
- When the local newspaper covers a school event, decline being identified by name in the caption.
- When social media accounts of the firm tag you, ask that tags not include identifying family detail.
None of these is rude. All of these are normal asks from a senior executive. The communications professionals you work with are generally happy to be told.
The high-risk director's additional steps
For directors whose role makes them subject to specific threats — defence, energy, mining, pharma, certain financial-services positions — additional measures are appropriate. The NCSC publishes guidance specifically for high-profile individuals including senior executives. The escalations include:
- A dedicated security advisor (in-house or contracted), with whom the family security posture is reviewed annually.
- A different posture on physical movement (varied routines, awareness training for family members).
- A higher bar on social media — sometimes no personal social media at all, sometimes only firm-managed accounts.
- Specific protective registration with the NCSC's high-risk individuals scheme where eligible.
For most directors, this is overkill. For some, it is exactly proportionate. The trigger for moving from the standard posture in this post to the high-risk posture is usually a specific event — a credible threat, a sensitive corporate development, an industry-level threat environment shift.
What this month looks like
Three pieces of work, each about thirty minutes.
One: check what address is on your Companies House record. If it is your home address, change it to the firm's registered office.
Two: ask the corporate communications team for the current version of your standing biography. Read it. Edit it for what is necessary.
Three: review your LinkedIn privacy settings, particularly the who can see your connections and who can see your activity settings.
In five weeks: the people around you. Assistants, drivers, household staff, and how to think about the access they have without insulting the relationship.