Is your LinkedIn account restricted?
You’re not alone! A look through the comments of this post will give you an idea as to the issues that others like you are facing.
In fact, I often get emails from readers of this blog demanding that I give them access back to their LinkedIn account and remove all restrictions. For the sake of transparency, I am not in any way related to LinkedIn, and I will tell them what I tell you: Only LinkedIn Customer Service can remove any restrictions placed on your account.
That being said, let’s take a look at some common scenarios as to why your LinkedIn account might be restricted in the first place and what you can do to remove those restrictions.
After reading through this article, pay close attention to the comments at the end of this article to see if there is someone similar to you who has had their issue solved. Note that I wrote this article long before the emergence of LinkedIn automation tools, so if you are using those tools, your issues fall into the same boat as to what I originally wrote about. If you used a LinkedIn automation tool and found your account restricted, just know that it will take some convincing of LinkedIn to help you get your account back, as social networks are getting better and better at spotting inauthentic and fake activity on their networks and may consider using these services worthy of a suspicious activity tag…
Why is My LinkedIn Account Restricted?
While there are many reasons why your LinkedIn account might be restricted, let’s go over the major ones that LinkedIn has announced here.
Content Violations
Unless you are being overly abrasive with your content, like sharing pornographic content or abusive messages, chances are this is not the reason why your account is restricted, although it deserves explanation.
LinkedIn has its own Community Policies pictured above which clearly spell out that they want LinkedIn to remain being a safe, trustworthy, and professional site. Therefore, as long as you post “normal” content and avoid any illegal activity or questionable behavior, you shouldn’t have any issues here.
Profile Violations
Profile violations are an extension of the content violations. So not only can you not publish content which goes against the community guidelines, you also can’t include inappropriate content as part of your LinkedIn profile, whether in textual form or image (profile photo, cover photo, etc.).
Identity Violations
It goes without saying that you should only post accurate information about yourself on LinkedIn. Should you post false information or try to impersonate someone on the business-based social network, your account will be restricted.
Further Reading: LinkedIn Profile Name: Should I Use My Personal or Company Name on LinkedIn?
Automated Tools Violations
LinkedIn does not allow any automated activity on its platform, as these are considered unreliable tools. This is probably the most common type of restriction, but I have also been given a temporary restriction despite not using automated tools simply because I was too active and exceeded weekly limits.
And I am not alone.
The Unwritten “Too Active” Violations
A friend in my network who generally keeps a low profile on LinkedIn and only has a few hundred connections had a temporary account restriction for this very same reason: being too active.
If you are not careful, your account may be suspended, as well. Here’s how:
The official response given by LinkedIn on why my friend’s account was suddenly suspended was:
“We have recently noticed a large number of page searches and profile views through your LinkedIn account. We are aware that you may be using an automated or manual process to systematically view LinkedIn web pages.
The information within LinkedIn is provided by our users for usage on the site only. In order to protect user privacy, our User Agreement prohibits using:
1. Automated or manual means to view an excessively high number of profiles or mini-profiles.
2. Automated means to run searches to collect or store data obtained from our site.”
The funny thing is that my friend was not doing any of the above; they were merely taking advantage of the LinkedIn feature to tag your connections (now only available in LinkedIn Sales Navigator ) by looking at the different options that existed and making sure that all connections had the proper tags on them. Sure, it generated a lot of clicks, but it obviously was not even closely related to the suspicious activity that this person was accused to have been doing in the initial restriction.
For the record, I had a similar situation, in that I was looking at a large number of profiles of my client’s employees in preparation for a social selling training, looking for good LinkedIn profile examples to share.
Why do I bring all of this up?
- Anybody who is too “active” and generates a lot of clicks may have their LinkedIn account restricted with no warning. If you want to do some research on the social networking site, do it over a period of several days to spread out the clicks. As you can see from the case study above, the number of clicks you generate are being monitored and not what specific activity you are doing, so any of the millions of profiles on the site could be considered guilty of this by LinkedIn support.
- You also want to avoid a suspension of your account for another important reason: it took customer service nearly two weeks to get back to my friend with their initial response. That’s right: for two weeks, my friend was in limbo and couldn’t access their account. Can you live without access to your account for two weeks? I’d go crazy! And the potential opportunity loss for business is an issue that your company may have to face if you are getting business leads and potential connections from LinkedIn.
- This is a case where LinkedIn was being paranoid and automatically slapping the wrist of an innocent user. Who knows what could happen to you? Make sure you get into the habit of backing up your LinkedIn connections for these types of worst case scenarios.
Other Unwritten Violations
There are apparently other reasons why accounts are banned or restricted. As I was writing this blog post, one of my blog readers sent in:
“Neal, I am not sure how you were able to reach customer service at Linkedin. I have sent no less than 3 emails to customer service from my primary email address in the last 72 hours because they have restricted my account based on the number of people who have viewed my profile in the last week. This all occurred because I created a new group that has generated a lot of interest and is adding members every day at a high rate. The one phone number found…for customer service just leads to voicemail. So to my group members it appears that I have just abandoned the group and to others who have sent me email it looks as though I am not responding.”
In addition, LinkedIn will restrict your account for the following:
- If you send out too many requests per week and receive too many “I Don’t Know” responses, LinkedIn will restrict you by asking you to enter an email address to whoever you want to connect to going forward. While this is obviously not an example of inappropriate content, LinkedIn does consider it a violation of site rules.
How to Resolve LinkedIn Account Restrictions
Now that you know why your LinkedIn account might be restricted – and how to avoid those restrictions in the future – let’s look at how we can go about getting access back to your account.
Follow the Onscreen Prompts
For certain violations, such as content-related issues, you will get an on-screen prompt the next time you log in, where you have the ability to ask LinkedIn to reconsider their decision, after which they will inform you of the final outcome.
Verify Your Identity
In other cases, such as profile-related or identity-related, you will first be asked to verify your identity. This includes cases where your profile has been hacked. Once again, go through the procedure to prove you are the real person behind the account, and hopefully you will be back on LinkedIn soon and the fake identity quashed.
Automated Account Restrictions
LinkedIn does not take the use of automated tools lightly, and your account might be temporarily or permanently disabled as a result. LinkedIn has a whole section on what to expect here, but from what I have heard, resetting your password will give you a clean slate and an opportunity to show that you are NOT using automated software, regardless of the number of invitations per week you are sending, or invitation requests you are receiving.
LinkedIn Connection Requests Restriction
Somewhat related to the popularity of LinkedIn automated tools is the restriction of connection requests that you can send out per week, which is currently at around 100 connection requests. There is no way around this restriction. Wait until the following week to send out more connection request messages as a basic rule.
The “I Don’t Know” Restriction
Stop sending invites for a while and over the course of time, this restriction should fade away. At the same time, make sure that all of your pending invitations are deleted. (If you don’t know how to do that, click here for LinkedIn’s instructions.) Going forward, tone down your invitations both in terms of frequency but also in personalizing each invite and making sure that you have a number of mutual connections with them. The more you have, the higher your response rate, and the less you risk being accused of suspicious behavior and facing account suspension.
Further Reading: What is a LinkedIn IDK? And Why Should I Care?
Other Advice to Avoid LinkedIn Restrictions
If you’ve read this far and you want to do your best to avoid future restrictions, read on!
Consider Investing in LinkedIn Premium
Some of the restrictions LinkedIn places, such as the number of searches you can do each month, are used to monetize their platform and get you to upgrade to LinkedIn Premium. If you want to strategically leverage LinkedIn to drive six figures or greater revenue for your company, I highly recommend you consider purchasing LinkedIn Premium. It not only gives you more searches and other benefits, but it also shows LinkedIn that you are using LinkedIn for work and thus they can expect increased app activity from you, thus decreasing the chance of future restrictions, even in the face of an uptick in connection request messages. Doing so can help maintain conversion rates and continue to develop quality interactions.
Further Reading: LinkedIn Premium Is Worth It. Here’s Why.
Add Value to the LinkedIn Ecosystem
Although it is devoted to businesses, LinkedIn is still at its heart a social media platform looking for high-quality content. That means that in order to avoid being accused of suspicious behavior or risking a suspension, you should regularly share content and engage with the relevant content others are putting on LinkedIn. Being a quiet observer is not necessarily considered abusive behavior by LinkedIn support, but it does lend more credence to the idea that your account is not an ideal member of LinkedIn. You are on a social media platform–engage whenever you can!
Further Reading: LinkedIn Newsletters: Why They are Worth Your Time and 6 Best Practices on How to Create Them
Tone Down Your LinkedIn Activity
As mentioned above, there are weekly limits, and ignoring activity level limits could land you with a permanent restriction due to suspicious behavior. From connection request messages to general searches, make sure you are not behaving in a way that suggests the use of chrome-based tools like automation tools to peruse the site. Being too active outside of engaging with content and displaying your own in a given period of time can signal to moderators that your account is engaging in behavior that is not considered ideal for LinkedIn users.
Avoid Using LinkedIn Automation Tools
From sending too many requests per day, to excessive behavior like searching LinkedIn all day, LinkedIn pays close attention to what it considers standard human behavior and what it considers likely to be artificial intelligence or an automation tool. Using these tools–considered unreliable tools by LinkedIn– is one of the surest ways to make sure you are banned, restricted, or suspended. Any kind of tool, from a generation tool to a farming tool is considered problematic. LinkedIn is great for forging beneficial connections, but is only useful if rules are adhered to and automation software and artificial intelligence are avoided.
Only Send Invites to Those With Lots of Mutual Connections and Personalize Them
Creating happy connections is exciting, but only send personalized messages to people who have a high chance of accepting, like 1st level connections. Using the number of mutual connections you have as a guide is an excellent metric, as it makes sure you will not be accused of inappropriate behaviors, and dramatically lessens the risk of restriction.
Further Reading: Top 10 Ways How to Get More Connections on LinkedIn
Conclusion
I am hoping this clarifies restricted accounts for you, but if you have a scenario not covered above, please drop your experience in the comments. While you’re there, read the comments for the experiences of our readers and feel free to chime in. If you’re trying to ping LinkedIn, check out my post on how to send a complaint to LinkedIn.
Hero photo by Rendy Novantino on Unsplash
LinkedIn can still restrict your _premium_ account for no reason. Having a Premium account does not make you less vulnerable. Moreover, they may still continue charging your credit card for your premium account even you can’t use their platform. And there is no way to cancel this payment (since you no longer have access to your account) other than to call your bank.
This is the first time I have heard of this Julia! Do tell more!
I just had my Premium account restricted today for no reason. I was asked to verify my account with government issued ID?!?!
I tried to get a hold of them on X (formally known as twitter) an upon attempting them to send a DM, I was immediately locked out of Twitter. I was able to immediately gain access again though with a CAPTCHA.
I’ve read countless stories or Premium and Premium business users being locked out in the same manner. Many complied with the request, only to be permanently banned from LinkedIn for no reason.
I’m not sure what is going on and never experienced anything like it really. My LinkedIn name is exactly the same as it is on the credit card I use for Premium account payments.
From what I’ve read, it’s looking pretty bleak. Seems the only way to get customer support to respond is by publicly shaming them on Twitter or file a complaint with the BBB.
As premium members, we have access to Premium Chat Support. however, we cannot take advantage of it as we are required to be logged in, in order to access that feature. Julia is also right with regards to the continuous Premium account charges every month, even when someone is permanently banned, from what I’ve read.
This has all gotten out of hand. LinkedIn asking us to verify who WE are in ways extreme, as building a system that actively monitors and removes bad actors is too expensive.
I especially love this tidbit: “The verification process typically involves providing a government-issued ID and/or other personal information to confirm your identity. This information is kept secure and is not shared with other users.” – with all of the hacking (because nothing is unhackable…crypto theft, passkey, and ongoing exampmes of etc.) why would one EVER upload government documentation to a server in trust of a private company’s security measures(s)? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?!?
I just tried to log in today…my account is restricted, what?!?! Why? thank God i found another like you who got this message about providing ID.. as soon as i read that i thought the same thing you did that like ‘are you kidding me i have to now upload govt ID all because i have not logged in since May 2023? Why?’ [i thought of the same thing you did about the increased compromising of our private data]. So did you upload your ID or no?
Please reinstate my account. I was wrongfully restricted. Please do this!
This blog is in no way related to LinkedIn. The only way to get your account reinstated is to contact LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com, NOT to comment on my blog! Thank you!
Banned by LinkedIn Facebook group (I am not affiliated with LI or the FB group)
facebook.com / groups / bannedbylinkedin
Had my account restricted for 'sending a high volume of invites'. I send 80 as a one off on an account I have had 3 years. I guess LinkedIn is a misnomer? Fact is that if you are not paying them the just want you to sit there and be inmail spammed by those that are. Idiotic company
My account got restricted today, so that is pretty much the end of my linkedin use. They didn't even give a warning. Now in order to get it back, i have to provide a drivers license or some passport. There is no way i'm doing that, so it is the end of linkedin for me.
Mike, sorry to read that. But in my experience they don’t reinstate after uploading a DL scan anyway as I got the infamous ‘permanently restricted’ email message from ’em within moments of uploading my DL scan. I have no idea what my infringement was, never got a warning email, totally in the dark, Connections to journos and various other treasured connections are gone forever apparently! This is the EN message I got seconds after the upload:
“Hi …
We’ve deemed the activity in your account is in violation of the LinkedIn User Agreement and Professional Community Policies. Your appeal has been denied and your account has been restricted permanently.
Please see our User Agreement and Professional Community Policies for more information.
Regards,
LinkedIn Customer Support”
And there is no way to appeal or contact them again etc. Utterly bizarre behaviour from a household name. Shameful, brat-childish, inexplicably draconian.
I can’t even log in to be able to find out their email address to verify my account. Does anyone have their email address please?
I got this warning earlier today, and I never mean to be too too active, but I just don’t want my account suspended or deleted at all as this would make me very upset. Could you give me any advice?
For recruiters and sales reps Linkedin is becoming cr**p. In my company we are all very upset of this worsened service (specially since it was acquired by Microsoft).
Fortunately your comment gave me the laugh I needed today :)
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Just got my brand new account banned without a warning, after receiving one invitation and asking for connection from 3 or 4 people, who all know me in person. I haven’t even done a lot of searches or profile views – just had no time to do that.
Well, I am probably lucky comparing to all those guys who lost accounts with thousands of connections for absolutely no reason.
In January of this year my Recruiter LinkedIn account (which I pay $120/month for) was permanently restricted. I reached out to LinkedIn in every way I know how (support, even contacted the sales team who helped me escalate the issue).
In my case, they responded with the same response as above. “Due to excessive activity on your account”. When I questioned them what exactly that meant, they responded they were unable to disclose that to me? Strange considering I have been a customer for over 5 years and have paid $120/month for 5 years. I never received a warning from them or a temporary restriction. One day I just came in the office and poof my LinkedIn was gone. 50k+ connections gone.
As a recruiter, LinkedIn has been one of my company’s main tools to not only find talent, but stay in touch with the connections we have made and keep everyone up to date on the companies/jobs we are working on.
I have been following up with LinkedIn constantly and still cannot seem to get a response nor any of my questions answered.
Due to this, I lost my job this past week. Moving forward trying to find a new job without a LinkedIn profile as a recruiter will be extremely tough. Even in several of the online applications I have seen, companies require that you provide them your LinkedIn URL on the application.
I will continue trying to get this issue resolved, but any help or guidance on this matter would be greatly appreciated. I know this is not just happening to me!
TI just got shut out too and at first I could not figure out why. After reading this I see it must’ve been because I was trying to build up connections.
There must be a way to sue. Especially in your case where you were paying for the service.
I just combed through the User Agreement policy again and it never mentions anywhere that they will close you out due to too much activity. On the contrary, they always are trying to promote you to build up more and more connections!
There really should be some sort of warning to tell you that you will get shut out if you continue doing whatever it is.
And then they ask you for government issued ID for verification. Doesn’t this seem kind of strange that they need it? And that they make innocent users give it? And then take so long to resolve the issue? (they claim they’ll discard your ID info once they verify your account.)
What are they doing in the meantime (the months it takes them to verify) with my personal information?
With the recent Facebook scandals, I think we all should have reason to be nervous.
Big corporations like this with so many users and so much data need to be held accountable.
I am curious, have you considered litigation?
So, 8 years since you published this article and LinkedIn is still busy screwing up people.
I created my account about a week ago, I was busy adding all my experience and trying to find my old coworkers. Today I got a warning about “large number of page searches and profile views “. I am not sure what they mean by a large number… I visited like 30-40 people and 10 company profiles… so… and wrote like 5 messages.
I actually want to find a job, but now I am afraid my account will be suspended if I start applying to them as I will have to visit a few pages to do that…
I guess LinkedIn will have the same future as Skype, thank you Microsoft for ruining one more great product! Keep it going!
They’re still screwing up so bad.
I am next linkedin victim! Yesterday they shut up my site. Since 2012 I had been publishing articles on English translation techniques. I was instrucing the young about do’s and don’s in language translation. I always followed site rules, and never published articles advocating terror, porn or other inaccrptable elements for civil society. I was treating Linkedin like my sidekick, and suddenly without warning shutted up. All is gone! They asked my ID details, and I sent. An automatic reply came that a specialist will contact me soon. But when? What’s my fault? How can I appeal? You cannot appeal resolution centre unless you have an active Linkedin page. Can you please send me email address to resolution centre officer? Thanks
Did they contacted you?
#Linkedin has lost it after the take over. I do not use any automation and they restricted my account that I use for over publishing. Strange ways to build a network with first asking users to join their SMB program for Free. They even restricted my company account, which was not even in question. Sorry, friends do not waste time on Linkedin as a social network, as it is not one and is not even professional about what it does. How do they call it a professional network.
linkedin is asking me to “verify your identity”, I have submitted my document, but still it has not solved my problem. They are showing that your case is being processed please wait. what should i do?
thank you.
I was setting up my account for the first time. Just entered all my info and added a few people and the next day my sccount was restricted. For me to get into the account again or even to delete the info and close the account, they want me to send a selfie and a non-redacted copy of my government ID to a third party company known for selling data, or give them a notarized affidavit of identity. They’re holding my personal info hostage.
No rights, no redress, no prosecutorial accountability, no specific charges, no opportunity for defense when accused by LinkedIn. If you do manage to successfully get a support ticket (you have to log in to get one – duh) they send you in an endless circle, subject you to verbal abuse, assume you are guilty, and never respond with any degree of logic. If you ask 3 questions they give an insufficient response to one and blow of the others. How does one overuse a system they can’t log into? And since such activity could well be being carried out by some 3rd party hacker who got your login by breaching their security, and they are claiming you are being restricted to protect their members (apparently the accused is chopped liver)… Help them build their network and popularity for 10 years, and they repay you by putting you in LinkedIn LockOut. And we thought the Almighty was inscrutable.
Today I decided that I would take the time to personally reply to the messages I received in my LinkedIn inbox over the Christmas period. I would hardly call the behaviour excessive, yet LinkedIn have retriscted my account and warned me that I could be permanently banned.
I had contacted Customer Services a few days ago to confirm that I was not using automation or bots, how can a social media channel designed specifically for building business relationships punish people for using it for its intended purpose?
This is not social at all …
“If your account has been temporarily suspended for excessive page requests, it will automatically be re-enabled at the time specified on the suspension notification. Please be aware that repeated suspensions may result in permanent restriction of your LinkedIn account.”
If someone is adding people to his network or appearing too much in others search does that you will suspend the account permamnently ???? that is completely unfair. There has to be some solution to this bugging issue. I read so many articles on this and it’s not going good for LinkedIn at all. I don’t think it pushes towards being more social and have more people in your network. What is the point of adding connections to your profile or account – The PURPOSE is defeated here.
Correct me if I am wrong…Absolutely absurd.
Hi, I just want to say that they removed the restriction on my account after 1 month and 10 days.
Total absurt and maximum unprofessional company. I had a profile for several years, Premium account, I browsed the project profiles for 1 day (I am a Recruiter) and my account was permanently blocked. No warning, no information about what I did wrong, only: Our records show the permanent restriction on the account. As stated in our previous notification, we are able to lift the restriction of violations of our User Agreement.
Is this all normal ?!
I’m sorry to hear that. My account is still not unrestricted.
There is no way to contact customer care of linkedin. You can only raise a ticket.
There was no warning before they suspended my account. If anyone is aware of any contact no., where I can contact them through phone, please share. Thanks.
My account was temporarily restricted yesterday (30th Oct 2017). Today I raised a ticket by sending them photo of my id for verification. Got a reply that they are looking into it. I am just hay-wired, what to do without my linkedin profile. My job depends on it plus I am looking for new opportunities right now. This is extremely inconvenient. Their representatives have no idea how much time they’ll take. There is absolutely no other way to retrieve my data. After reading all these experiences, I am even more disappointed.
My account has been restricted on 29.09.2017. and I’m still waitting to be unrestricted.
I can’t belive this is happening. I sent them photos of my ID card on 29.09.2017. and they sent me only automatic reply. Few days later, I sent them e-mail about my case and that I want some informations about it. They reply two days later that they are checking my problem.
From that day, I sent them two or three mails, but I didn’t get any response from them.
Im very dissapointed.
My account was frozen this morning and they requested my country and drivers license funny they charged my credit card for premium service but don’t let you use it! I had a lot of views plus created a group. I am going to turn them into the better business bureau. They should not charge you for something you cannot use. It figures Microsoft now owns it no wonder it is a mess.
my friend’s account is been restricted with no reason..
how to get a ticket from the support team
And it was my proffessional account
Hi everyone! Well today I created new account for my partner, and he just activated free subscription for 1 month on Sales Navigator, after 4 hours of researching companies he got “Your LinkedIn account has been temporarily restricted”, and that is so stupid..why would they offer new users that option for subscription (1 month free) if they will ban you lol :)
Anyways, i’ve heared that ban is lasting just 12h/48h or 7 days max in total actually, so we will see.
I’ll keep you posted on what is happening with our new account.
Problem is because we cannot cancel subcription now and in 1 month they will charge us 550$…annnd that is a bit too high for my partner in our country.
There are much better companies/websites that offer good leads, linkedin is not the only one!
I just open Account but next day while open it its ban. What is actually reason. I dont have any spamming.
LinkedIn accounts are to only be used by one person and must be created under your first and last name. This is extremely important as it maintains the integrity of personal profiles and other services that we offer. Because of this violation, we’ve suspended this account.
Even though we are not able to transfer any profile connections or profile data, we are able to transfer the owned User Group to your valid LinkedIn account (if you already have one). A valid LinkedIn account would be an account that has been created under your first and last name. If you have a valid account on LinkedIn, please reply to this message with the primary email address. If you don’t have a valid account on LinkedIn, you can go here to create one:
Unfreeze my account. I have paid for premium and have not been able to even use it one month!
Dear Neal,
My company account is temporarily restricted and i have requested them couple of time and they have given below reason and now i am unable to understand what to do, can you please advise me how to revoke my account back.
I Create a linkedIn Account Yesterday Today The Account is locked I don’t know why? what should I do??
It’s crazy that this is still happening to people more than six years after you first reported it….
And it happened to me too, two days ago. I’m a BRAND NEW USER who was working on his profile and was blocked while editing my work history. I had the account maybe two days and suddenly I’m locked out with no explanation. I’m in the military preparing for retirement and wanted to set up a profile to prepare for the transition, and instead I’m being treated like a criminal. I didn’t invite anyone, in fact I set all of my info to private while I worked on it. At most I made a lot of minor edits to my profile in one evening, and ran several searches trying to look at some other profiles to see how they were structured but it wouldn’t let me because they weren’t in my network — and I don’t even have a network yet because I haven’t done anything. Too many clicks? Wow.
The only other thing I can assume happened is that a couple days prior I had created a separate account with one of those throwaway e-mail addresses to see how the site worked, since I didn’t want to create an account with my main e-mail address until I was comfortable with how it worked. Even then all I did was make a few edits to a test profile, just to see how the interface worked. Then I created my real one and planned to delete the first one. If that tripped a “spammer filter” then it was an honest mistake made by someone who has never used this or any other social media platform before.
It’s really frustrating that LinkedIn takes such an aggressive posture towards new users. We are learning the system and get NO WARNING — they just lock the account down. As far as I know the account may have been deleted, the URL just returns “Profile Not Found.”
I opened a request to unblock per LinkedIn’s instructions on their site and the only response I’ve gotten so far is a generic “your issue will be reviewed by a customer service rep as soon as possible” type message. I can’t even log into the help site to “update my case” because my account is suspended, and I’m afraid to create a new account for fear of being labeled a spammer. The original request form didn’t have an option to upload a government ID.
I will add though that I think the reason they say they might require a government ID is not to verify your ID against something else. Instead it just seems to be a way to erect a barrier to spammers — even if you submitted a fake ID (which they probably wouldn’t be able to tell from a real one) creating one would take time even in Photoshop, so it slows spammers down. So I get that. But no I don’t like it at all. Just inject CAPTCHAs into the response stream if you detect potentially fraudulent activity, just like Google does. If it detects potential abuse of its service from an IP (easily done if the user is behind a proxy servicing thousands of people) it prompts you with a CAPTCHA and then lets you proceed. Problem solved.
But of course that would require spending money, while a draconian policy is by comparison virtually free to implement. So it appears they choose to harm customers instead. Way to go LinkedIn.
Hi
how many days we should wait till the account is unrestricted? there is no reply to emails and help assistance messages. it’s so unprofessional to block a company linkedin account!
I do not know the answer to that as I do not work at LinkedIn! Perhaps others in the comment thread can provide advice based on your experiences?
this is utter nonsense from linkedin. they restricted my account for no reason. i’ve had my account for years. towards the end of last year my account just got restricted for no apparent reason other than ‘violating the terms and conditions, privacy blah blah blah. i figured maybe it was because i may have added people who where 3rd or 4th degree connections. but this is what linkedin is for, right?? i was seeking new career opportunities and was planning on reaching out to these people to inquire on what the organisation is like and so on and so forth. and then BOOM!! it happened!! i sent several emails, no response. sent my ID and all that! nothing!! eventually i gave up and created a new account with a different email address. barely two weeks later and may be 30/40 connections in, restricted AGAIN!!! at this point i was frustrated and out of email addresses. so i used my corporate email address. which has worked just fine and i’ve racked up connections in a short space. now i’m worried. also i’m worried how i’m going to continue using my account after my corporate email is deleted when i leave my current organisation. linkedin leaves much to be desired on that front. what a shame. in today’s digital space, a new startup can easily come and take their place, i for one will be very happy when that happens.
Linked in locked my out 2 weeks ago today. They have finally told me that “emails like mine (email address omitted by admin) are no longer accepted by LinkedIn”. In order for them to replace the email on my account, they require a photo identification or an Affidavit of Identity signed by a Notary Public. This is absurd. I have had my LinkedIn account for years and my business email system is on a secured serve. They have also been communicating with me through (email address omitted by admin). I am disgusted and refuse to provide anything that violates my privacy. I will quit LinkedIn first.
What’s up, I want to subscribe for this website to take newest updates, thus
where can i do it please help out.
My Linked In account got restricted today morning, I don’t know.
Today when I logged in to my account I had a pending invitation there so I accepted it and after surfing there for 5 minutes my system got turned off! due to electric loadsheding.
And right after 15 minutes I turned on my system and tried to login on Linked I see the account restricted message there.
I don’t know what is the actual reason I have submitted an appeal there but didn’t get any response, hoepfully will get a response soon.
Hi Neal
My account has been restricted, i was emailed several times, no one response from linkedin
Somnath Hore(som15hore@hotmail.com)
I do not work at LinkedIn nor have any representation with LinkedIn. You need to contact them directly. Thank you.
I was able to access my Linked In account as of 3pm ET today. As of 4pm it was simply gone. I have been sent notifications that I was past my commercial limit, but was unaware that they would shut off access to my account completely. If that is not the reason, then I am unsure as to why.I contacted Customer Service, but am not hopeful. I have been an account holder for 9 years and never had an issue before. Even if I wanted to pay for a premium account at this point I would not be able to do so. If anyone has any insight I would appreciate a reply.
Wow – that is terrible! As I have commented many times before, the only people that can restore your LinkedIn account work at Linkedin Customer Service…
Or a judge.
It also happened to me. Linkedin restricted my account without any reason (i wasn’t even logged in at that moment and when I signed in I’ve found my account restricted) and / or explanation (I wrote them several “appeals” without any answer. I think the only solution is going to court.
I was locked out today. Only 2k connections and have been built up over years so not sure why they restricted me.
I’m a “Premium” member and pay for the right to have more features on the site. Four requests in nine hours have yielded NO RESPONSE – so much for Premium. I can’t imagine having to wait three weeks…
Similar to Vicky’s post July 2, 2016. I am shocked LinkedIn wants a photo id which for most will mean their driver’s license. Their email came from – linkedin_support@cs.linkedin.com – so it does have the linkedin.com domain but with the “cs” addition. I thought for sure it is phishing; but after reading the feedback here, I guess I could black-out some numbers – but still is quite irritating.
(Not as funny as needing a Driver License to attend the DNC but not to vote! lol)
Received this:
Hi Paul, We’re requesting photo identification to verify that you meet our service eligibility and to ensure that you’re in compliance with the User Agreement. Under the “DO’s and DON’Ts” section, it states that you agree not to create a false identity on LinkedIn.
To allow access back to this account, we’ll need a scanned image of a valid government issued photo ID (like a driver’s license or passport) that has your:
• Photo
• Name
• Signature
• ID expiration date (if present)
Before you submit your government-issued ID, please cover the identification number on the copy of the document. We’re using this information solely for the purpose of validating your identity and assisting you with re-accessing your account. We’ll remove all copies of identity you’ve provided once this specific issue is resolved. Please note that if this issue comes up again, we may require you to present this information again.
I look forward to hearing your response in order to assist you further.
Regards,
Wilson
Safety Operations Support – Specialist
So thank you for providing this valuable web page – Neal Schaffer.
(as this page gets longer don’t forget to use Ctrl+”f” to search for example “photo”)
br Paul
And thank you for sharing your experiences with everyone!
i have restricted in linkedin, i sent an email and hopefully i got response from them. They want my photo id i would like to submit. but i dont know where should i drop my photo id. please help to get over that.
I am sorry Siva, but we are not LinkedIn, just a blog ;-) Good luck in your dealings with LinkedIn Customer Service!
I’ve had a Linkedin account since origination of Linkedin with 4,000 high-level connections. A Recruiter for 20 years requires Linkedin account to get a job (ourselves). I had a full profile with 7 recommendations. I am so embarrassed and can’t contact the people we were already working and corresponding with, through LiInkedin.
Due to “overqualified” I started own business with business page on .16 cents in my bank account. I can’t access my business page with company name. There are jobs’ generating on the company page which need to be changed.
I have been shut down by “Shannon” at Linkedin. “Shannon” is holding my personal and business reputation “HOSTAGE”. I did not spam and I did not have a fake profile. I received the below notice from “Shannon” at Linkedin. “Shannon” states to get my profile back I have to provide: Drivers License, PHOTO, “signature”, address. All my complete information to someone I have no idea who they are. If you see LInkedin has millions of truly fake profiles with foul words as the names.
GUESS WHAT: I SEARCHED LINKEDIN SECURITY PROFILES ON LINKEDIN – AND “SHANNON” DOES NOT EXIST AS AN EMPLOYEE AT LINKEDIN OR IN THEIR SECURITY DEPT. THE LINKEDIN EMPLOYEE’S ARE LISTED. LINKEDIN IS SENDING OUT FAKE NAMES REQUESTING CUSTOMERS FULL PERSONAL ID’S.
Also, our family is on “Safe At Home Program” through Secretary of State of CA. My drivers license is blocked at the Confidential Records Unit of the DMV. HOWEVER, an unknown LINKEDIN FAKE “Shannon” want’s my personal address, personal PHOTO, “signature.”
Linkedin shut down 3 of my employee profiles because I accessed them. We all work to post on each other profiles. They were ALL under MY COMPANY domain with independent employee’s.
READ THIS TO GET MY PROFILE BACK. I HAVE BEEN TWEETING OUT ALL OVER TWITTER TO JEFF WEINER CEO LINKEDIN.
HERE IS LINKEDIN’S NOTICE. THEY ARE HOLDING MY BUSINESS AND PERSONAL REPUTATION “HOSTAGE” FOR MY MOST PRIVATE INFORMATION. WHY DO THEY NEED A “SIGNATURE.” RIGHT TO PRIVACY LEGAL SUIT IS WHAT THEY WILL GET FROM ME VERY SOON. I’VE BEEN CONTACTING “CLASS ACTION” ATTORNEYS. 3 SO FAR ARE LOOKING AT CASE. I’m to turn over my most personal information to a FAKE LINKEDIN EMPLOYEE NAMED “SHANNON” WITHOUT EVEN SPEAKING TO SOMEONE DIRECT WHO’S OBTAINING MY INFORMATION. THEY WANT IT SENT THROUGH WEBSITE TO AN UNKNOWN “SHANNON”.
Hi Vicky,
We’ve identified suspicious activity concerning your LinkedIn account. It appears that you may be accessing multiple LinkedIn accounts and/or sharing access to your account. This activity is in violation of the LinkedIn User Agreement. For a complete list of “LinkedIn User Do’s and Don’ts”, please see the LinkedIn User Agreement: https://www.linkedin.com/static?key=user_agreement.
In addition we’ve received complaints from other members that you’ve sent unsolicited mass mailings and/or promotional materials in messages that appear to be phishing, spam, or abusive in nature. We realize not everyone understands how messages on LinkedIn should or should not be used. However, the LinkedIn User Agreement prohibits using LinkedIn to connect with people you don’t know and/or sending unsolicited mass mailings.
As a result, we’ve suspended your account. To allow access back to this account, we’ll need a scanned image of a valid government issued photo ID (like a driver’s license or passport) that has your:
• Photo
• Name
• Signature
• ID expiration date (if present)
We’re using this information solely for the purpose of validating your identity and assisting you with re-accessing your account. We’ll remove any and all copies of identity you’ve provided once this specific issue is resolved. Please note that if this issue comes up again, we may require you to present this information again.
Note: We request that prior to submitting your government issued ID, you cover the identification number on the copy of the document.
I look forward to your response.
Regards,
Shannon
LinkedIn Safety Operations Support Specialist
Member (06/15/2016 15:06 CST)
Phone number associated with LinkedIn account (if applicable):
Country of Residence: United States
Hi
Our account has been restricted in LinkedIn..
Can you please provide the LinkedIn customer care no. or any solution to retrieve my account back..
Thanks
Capermint technology
I’m getting the error like: Your LinkedIn account has been temporarily restricted . could you please let me know how many days it would be, LinkedIn is the only way to do my business these day… Anyone please help mw out from this to get a ride on it.
Thanks in advance
You need to contact LinkedIn Customer Service directly – this website is in no way related or affiliated with LinkedIn. Thank you!
Hi Remi,
I’m so sorry that I don’t have a quick answer. Due to the sensitive nature of your request, I’ve forwarded this message to our Safety team.
Please understand that your issue may require some additional research, which may delay their response. But someone from that team will get back to you as quickly as possible.
If you’re able to access your account, you can check the status of your case at any time from the Your cases tab on LinkedIn Help:
1. Go to LinkedIn.com and move your cursor over your profile photo on your homepage and select Help Center from the dropdown.
Note: If your name doesn’t appear in the top right of the Help Center, click the Sign In link and sign in to your account.
2. Click your profile picture in the top right.
3. Click Your cases.
4. Click the subject line of your inquiry, review the details, and update if needed.
Thanks for your patience as we look into this for you.
Regards,
Consumer Support Specialist
Member (05/30/2016 16:24 CST)
Issue Type: Other
In Which App or Site?: Not App/Site Specific
On What Device?: Other
Subject: What are you talking about?!
Your Question: You people are scaring me, I never abused LinkedIn, last Friday I had a premium account.
All info on LinkedIn is correct, honest and with good intentions. I never abused anything until you HIGH SUSPENDED my premium account.
Could you show me what is so abusive? Maybe I have been hacked, I have no idea what you people are talking about. Could you show me the abusive content on my profile?
I have no idea what you people are talking about.
________________________________________________
And their advise makes no sense I’m not even able to log in on my profile…. What a boneheads at LinkedIn… Disabling as semi-government anti-communist group. And a premium account and not offering any quick solution, this is the 3rd time I had this answer. They will be sorry for messing with Section 21 they will regret the day they did I ordered our next PsyOP to target LinkedIn and ordered my team to start working on the video to do that. (And we are very good!)
I still can’t log in even after mails like this, who can help me and why is this happening I still don’t understand:
Can you show me the evidence of violating content? I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
I did not violate anything in the user agreement. I know of and I double checked.
Maybe some people made the mistake of not remembering me or they might even dislike me and have refused the connection, but I did not violate your user agreement. I know lots of people. (Army)
I’m absolutely sure about that.
That way we might be able to fix these violations together, if any are found. (and I doubt that,)
Surly I have not posted anything that harms LinkedIn good standards. But I did think freedom of speech would be part of these standards.
My content is so good it attracted a member of the NOBEL committee to my group Section 21. (He will think what happened to my profile)
Could you please specify what content violates your user agreement and include evidence? If any content does violate your user agreement, I will remove it promptly without question.. (But as I said I can’t imagine)
Lt. Col Remi van Dongen
Section 21 S21/MI21 PsyOPS, “Oversight”
P.S. The only reason I make new support tickets is you have blocked me so much there is no other way…. I have been at it for a day now (clicking pictures of rivers) I must have my account back (It is my everything to me), I’m sure I did nothing wrong and I want to see that “unappropriated content”, I did not post any.
If anything unappropriated has been posted my account must have been hacked.
The things I post are good articles and surely not inappropriate in any way.
All within the user agreement.
I wonder what has been posted that is so bad, I worry about my high standards.
Please show me that violating content. I’m sure NONE can be found. I see others post nudity, I post Ronald Reagan and Jesus, may you find him in your heart and forgive my supposed transgressions.
I sent this message to linkedIn but had no response:
Issue Type: Technical Support
In Which App or Site?: LinkedIn (Website)
On What Device?: Windows Laptop/Desktop
Subject: URGENT: Blocked for? I don’t understand why???
Your Question: First I got an excuse then this mail:
Hi Remi,
I do apologize this confusion happened, but as I mentioned, to get the service back under that promotion you do need to contact the Veterans group at [link removed] as they would be able to look this over and take action.
Thank you,
Charles
Support Specialist
Then I get a mail my account is suspended permanently please help!
I have no idea how to fix this and my life’s work is on that linkedIn page?
Also I just got a member of the NOBEL COMMITTEE in my groups, he wanted to join for the good work we do for democracy.
I’m also in important communications, next day suddenly my account gets permanently blocked. I’m ashamed as hell. But I can’t imagine I did anything wrong.
Could you please help fix this?
Best regards,
Remi van Dongen
____________
If you have any suggestions how I can get LinkedIn to fix this, they seem unresponsive…. And I have no idea why….
We noticed some suspicious activity on your account that needs to be reviewed. Until then, you won’t be able to access things like your News Feed or messages. Learn More about why your account might be disabled.
Are you OK?
Everyone in our company was permanently restricted yesterday. I mean everyone, I do not get it, Linkedin now practice collective responsibility for actions of some person in the company. It is kind of getting rediculous.
And they did not even refunded the money for sales navigator. It is basically like stealing on their part.
Wow – that is scary. Sincerely hope that everything works out for you and your company, but please keep us updated!
Hello Neal,
I am unable to make new searches of contacts on linkedin,the message being displayed is that i have reached the maximum number and i need to upgrade my account to a premium membership.As of now my account is unpaid.Now this is not genuine.
Kindly guide what to do.
Thanks
Hey Gary, that is correct. LinkedIn started limiting the number of searches you can do on a free account sometime ago. There is no way out: If you do a LOT of searching on LinkedIn, the thinking goes, you are using LinkedIn for business and thus should pay the piper. If LinkedIn is an important part of your business, you might want to think about paying a nominal fee to access more search results. Sorry that I don’t have any other alternative advice for you…
I’m constantly on Linkedin at the moment searching for suitable contacts. Each night I get locked out of my account after viewing a certain number of profiles. The account is automatically restored each day at 6pm CST. It seems to be related to my general level of activity on Linkedin or perhaps total number o clicks (as per the issue at the beggining of this post). My question is, does anybody have any idea at what level of activity or number of clicks this happens.
Thanks for the feedback Johnny! I’m not sure what that exact number is … maybe someone following the comments can offer advice?
Please help me because my account has been restricted and am really worried,could you please have it rectified and resolved it asap for me sir.
You need to contact LinkedIn Faisal ;-)
OK… I cam across your site after firing off an email to support my recent inexplicable account restriction, so I guess I’ll add to this woeful thread by pasting my rather lengthy email to them… as of now I am waiting to see how this reply is received… so without further ado…
Hello,
This is quite an unbelievable and rather shocking development and response.
First, thank you very much for LinkedIn and yourself addressing this issue at this time.
Second, I realize that perhaps due to continuing security reasons until I am able to verify my identity with you that you may not be able to tell me much about what is going on and the nature of the compromise that has occurred to my account, but I very much would like to know as I have maintained LinkedIn as basically my one singular, professional and social networking site. I would very much like to know if you believe any of my personal and/or professional information has been hurt by disclosure or damage to my reputation. This is of paramount importance to me now and I find the ubiquity and vagueness of the security responses thus far very unsettling and somewhat disturbing. In short, I just want to make sure everything is “OK” in general with my on-line persona, my information, my reputation and that no harm has come to my my identity to what is becoming evidently clear is more serious breach and security lapse on the part of LinkedIn than I first imagined and to make sure that any of the information that has been compromised could be used in other ways to hurt me or my identity. Basically, I think it is imperative that LinkedIn communicate clearly with me as to what is going on exactly.
Third, before I just hand over to you a scan of my photo, a Government Identification along with a signature… I think I need to start off saying that I think this is absolutely ridiculous. first of all… I have never registered ever never ever any of these things with LinkedIn and I never ever would for the reasons that my signature and documented government identification could be used fraudulently therefor I never ever provide that information to anyone but the government, my employers, or banks etc. If you think that as a basic customer that I should all of a sudden comply to prove who I am by handing over documentation that you never had in the first place it only makes me more suspicious as to who you people are exactly and what is really going on.
In your most recent response you provided these “options”
Due to the nature of this issue, LinkedIn must verify that you are the original owner of the account. Please utilize one of the options below:
Option 1: Reply to this message and attach a scanned image of a government issued ID (for example: a driver’s license, passport, or country ID) that has your:
• Photo
• Name
• Signature
• ID expiration date (if present)
If you don’t wish to provide your ID, you can print this form to verify your identity http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/global/id/3629/ft/eng and sign it before a Notary Public. Once notarized, this form can be scanned and attached in your response to this message.
In your most recent response you provided these “options” This is really quite absurd to me, especially in light of the fact that you have told me absolutely NOTHING SPECIFIC regarding the nature of how, when, why, or what was compromised, nor have you provided a phone number to discuss the matter if it is such an egregious breach as your responses intimate, but as I am a basic free user and this is a MAJOR hassle for me and since I am most certainly NOT providing LinkedIn with my photo (beyond my black and white which you already have in my profile [the one with me in sunglasses sipping a milkshake] which is the only photo I have ever used with your service ever), my government ID (not happening ever… blacked out or not), or my signature (the easiest thing in the world to copy and then use fraudulently so that’s not happening either)… while I do very much understand and appreciate where you are coming from security-wise… I think you and LinkedIn need to re-think your security measures and response. First of all, you have put my personal and professional information at risk, I am entitled to know what happened. Second, it does not exactly instill faith or confidence in LinkedIn for you to be requesting the absolutely most sensitive information for any person who values best practices in safeguarding their identity by requiring this when it was never asked of me in the first place… what do you really think you would have to compare it to in order to validate my identity. I could be anyone submitting this information and you would be none the wiser so it is completely ironic to me that would ask for such things. Furthermore, Notaries cost money. It is absolutely ridiculous that you would have as your next option to go through all the same hoops but have it notarized!! Absurd. Are or are you not a forward thinking, intelligent organization that can surely come up with better security response measure beyond these?
Honestly, I enjoy LinkedIn and I would like to continue using it, however if my account has been compromised so sensitively as you would have me believe… surely there is more you can do… IE explaining what is specifically occurring, when it happened, and how you are mitigating it… along with figuring out a way to verify who I am through different means than requesting personal documentation directly or taxing economically to prove to you something that I should not be required to do unless I was applying for a loan or something. I am writing to you now from my primary email account. I already successfully changed my password which alerted me to this issue in the first place when I was no longer able to gain access, but the fact that I was able to reset it all should certainly validate exactly who I am and what account should be associated with me. I wish for more disclosure on the part of LinkedIn and a resolution that is not absurdly inconvenient. If I have, in fact been compromised, do understand that by law you must inform me of the specifics and that I take my identity and my privacy VERY seriously!
Please reply with my requests as priorities in mind as I do retain an attorney, but I would very much like you to resolve this matter promptly, and any further REASONABLE information through questions perhaps only I would know regarding my account, time-lines etc. like many other companies invoke such as Google, Yahoo etc. to resolve account breaches be done in this instance, but honestly this is possibly the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard of in my life for wanting to access my account after successfully changing my password! Yes I am writing a book!! I am most certainly the REAL [name redacted], graduate of [redacted] University in [redacted], writer, consultant etc. I have had my account with LinkedIn for quite a long time, but if you cannot resolve this matter through reasonable means and provide some specifics as to what happened… I suppose I am prepared, as much as I would not like to… walk away from you forever and/or have LinkedIn subpoenaed for with-holding information from me as a user that your company has allowed to compromise my identity or reputation without informing me of any notice ahead of time nor specifics in your replies.
I do hope that you will re-think how better your Security measures and responses so that they are not hurting the users they are meant to protect. I would not have taken the time to write this email if I were not the real person in question.
Think about it!
Sincerely,
[name redacted]
Thanks for chiming in adding value to the numerous comments we have received – hope you’ll also post the response you get, if/when you get one!
Hello Neal… thanks for the words of support. Here’s their response with no resolution in sight…. followed by my latest reply.
Hi [name redacted],
We take security seriously, and take swift action to keep our member’s data safe when fraudulent or abusive activity is identified. However, we’re not able to publicly share the details of our prevention and detection systems.
Once the account is restored, you can download your account data history, which includes login information such as IP addresses. To help ensure the security of your account, I also recommend activating the Two-Step Verification feature at that time.
A verifiable photo ID will ensure you’re the true account holder and in compliance with our User Agreement, which requires the registration of true information. We do not offer phone support at this time as this issue cannot be resolved by phone.
There are a few scenarios that could explain the possibility of unauthorized access to a LinkedIn account:
• If you’ve recently signed in to your account from a public computer or a shared device at your workplace or home, and didn’t completely sign out of your account, the next person to access the site on that device may have unintentionally signed in to your account.
• An email registered to your account has been compromised or is outdated and has been recycled by the issuer.
• If the same password is used in multiple websites, this could have been compromised through unaffiliated sites or a phishing attack.
We’d recommend these best practices for your online privacy:
• Always completely sign out of your LinkedIn account when you’re done.
• Don’t use the same password on multiple websites. If fraudsters identify your password on one site, they can use it to access your other accounts.
• Select passwords that can’t easily be guessed. Create one that includes 10 or more characters.
Hint: Think of a meaningful phrase or quote and turn it into a complex password using the first letter of each word in the sentence and add more complexity by adding capital letters, punctuation and symbols.
• Never give your password to others or write it down.
• Secure your email accounts by regularly changing their associated passwords and utilizing any additional security features they offer.
Unless a verifiable form of identification is submitted, we cannot grant access to this account. Again, we’re using this information solely for the purpose of validating your identity and assisting you with re-accessing your account. We’ll remove any and all copies of identity you’ve provided once this specific issue is resolved.
Best regards,
Melzee
LinkedIn Trust & Safety
My reply this morning:
Excuse me for not understanding exactly what method of validation you think you are able to implement by me providing a photo other than the one my friend Lauriane took of me that I use in my LinkedIn Profile Photo. There is no possible way LinkedIn is going to confirm who I am if I send you a photo because you have NOTHING to compare it to! Totally ridiculous!
I am not going to put up with this non-sense. I am going to publicly blog and write to the media (as that is my business you will see on my profile)… and I will be contacting my attorney in lieu of LinkedIn with-holding my ability to manage my professional and personal information that you claim has been compromised, putting me under direct personal duress and causing damage to me, my identity, and my reputation every minute that you continue your refusal to resolve this issue with reasonable steps that are not obstructive or far-fetched explanations for purposes that are neither logical or legitimate.
Law suits have been filed and won for far less!
Judging by the massive amount of people that have restricted/high restricted account access issues… I think LinkedIn would be wise not to invite an increasingly high probability of an individual or class action law suit for damages and alot of bad press.
– {Name Redacted]
So that’s where it stands at the moment… what is infuriating is that I hardly ever send invites, if any… rarely if ever browse others, or even interact with the damn site in the first place! I haven’t even been on the site in at least a month. Whatever their claims of compromised security are, they are clearly not invested in real resolution and my suspicions of them grow with every shadowy reply they send to me.. Having now researched how many users have been having such issues for various reasons… I do not think that an op-ed in the New York Times and/or a class action law suit is out of the question. If LinkedIn portrays itself as a professional network… they must be held accountable to act and respond professionally and provide better disclosure, communication, and resolution to otherwise simple issues. Otherwise… it becomes ever more apparent that LinkedIn may have an alternate agenda and are arbitrarily harming users at will for purposes that are unclear and not in the interest of protecting users’ rights to manage and protect their own personal and professional information. Regardless of whatever their TOS may or may not be… they violate the law by not providing reasonable means of resolution that are consistent with what is required to use their service in the first place. People’s livelihoods and information is extremely valuable and their demands for sensitive documentation to supposedly verify identities is not only absurd without having any information to compare it to initially, but it is also a predatory strong-arm tactic of companies that usually have a unstated policy of deception and non-accountability. I predict if that if their tactics continue… there downfall will follow swiftly…. nobody is dependent on LinkedIn or any other free networking site and when they portray themselves as something they’re not, people will begin to leave them in droves.
Keep up the great work Neal!! I bet you never imagined your thread would be 5 years running about such non-sense! Perhaps you should consider broadening your insights and expertise in this area to other media outlets like Anderson Cooper… I’m sure any big network like CNN or Fox would love to see how a big and popular company such as LinkedIn exploits user information and privacy without recourse or accountability… and expose their supposed fraud protection as a fraud itself!
Thanks for the nice words – it IS amazing how long this post has been active!!!!!
My Linkedin Profile has been Permanently restricted is there any option to unrestrict my linkedin profile?
Please contact LinkedIn Customer Service. This blog has no affiliation whatsoever with LinkedIn – you must contact them directly. Thank you!
My account is temporarily restricted and i dnt know why??? i got a mail that send your I.D and I have send 3 time but still is showing restricted…So what to do know..
You must somehow get in touch with LinkedIn Customer Service. Good luck to you – and do let us know what happened after you do!
I am going through the same chaos now. Highly Restricted for about a month, still no response from support.
I can’t login on LinkedIn, not even see my ticket status, because of the restrictions. In the past month, I’ve opened about 4 support tickets (always waited about a week before opening a new one), with only two tickets being responded. The responses were something like:
“This is bad to hear. But what exactly is the problem? Could you please explain it to us?”, which I’ve answered kindly, but never got a reply back from.
“Could you please proof your identity? Send us a photo of your ID.” I did this, I took a picture and sent a photo. No reply anymore.
I still don’t know what I did wrong. I never used false information. I never accepted or added people that I didn’t know. Didn’t have any activity boost or tremendous amount of profile views either. And the worst of all: I don’t have any idea when they are going to enable my account again.
This is really bizarre – almost like a Catch 22 situation! I do hope that LinkedIn Customer Service get back to you and resolve the situation ASAP.
Finally the restrictions have been lifted. And the explanation I got is really strange. They told me that they thought my whole profile was a fake identity. They took so long because they had to verify if the photo of my ID which I’ve sent them was actually genuine. They did not include any reason why they suspected I was using a false identity.
So when they doubt, for some unknown reason, they immediately close your account? Why not instead ask for my ID before closing my account, and even automatically locking it after a few weeks if I don’t send it?
However, thank your keeping this [age alive. It gave me moral support knowing that I’m not the only one with this problem.
Thanks for letting us know that the restriction has been lifted! It’s a shame because everyday there are so many fake profiles that send me invitation requests, yet the “real people” get their accounts closed ;-(
As I always say, I do hope that someone from LinkedIn reads this and that the comments provide useful feedback to them as well as moral support to others.
Hi Neal, after using iMacro for a while to browse through relevant profiles in a hands-free mode I cannot access my LI account form my workstation – no matter which browser. But the account is not suspended – I can still use it from my iPhone. The PC however returns the following error: ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS. I think they just suspended my IP. I wish I read your post yesterday. I will try to log to my account again tomorrow. Luckily I am simple job seeker with a Premium account, so hopefully LI will forgive my little sin.
Best of luck to you Anton. There are lots of applications that are trying to deliver more value from your LinkedIn account, but when you use these “non-official” LinkedIn tools, you really are at risk. I hope others reading this will understand this as well. Do let us know how things go!
Thanks for the moral support, Neal
Just a quick update: I can access my profile form iPhone (= LI App), but I cannot change anything in my profile. Yet I can see that more people have viewed my profile. What is going on here? So now, according to my LI App I am “Top 7%” among my 300 contacts. Should I open a bottle of champagne and party?
Seriously, I totally agree to what you have written in response to my comment. The users of LI want Result (i.e. Jobs, Ideas, Employees), while LI is in the business of selling the Process. Sounds like a good old MMOPRPG.
This pervert logic of undisclosed self-deceiving is the true source of mutual bad feelings. As soon as the job is found, who needs LI anyway?
I was unblocked after writing a letter to the Support. That was pretty fast, but I am still unsure whether what happened – there was no feedback. I will terefore not mention how many profiles I browsed before getting suspended, just so as not to create a new religion. But it would be great to listen to a confession of a LinkedIn insider to understand my risks exactly.
Glad to hear that got solved quickly! Stay safe!!!
Thank you Neal,
They have confirmed that I was blocked due to my suspicious activity. Here is the relevant extract from their reply:
“We noticed that an excessively high number of member profiles or pages were being viewed through your account, so we temporarily suspended it. To protect our members’ information, the User Agreement prohibits systematically viewing large numbers of LinkedIn pages. As you mentioned this was because you where going through all those profiles but if the system detects it it automatically suspend the account.”
I have asked them in return to define “systematic” and “large” without much hope of receiving a straightforward answer, though.
Thanks for the feedback Anton! Just as I had thought – and this brings us back to what I blogged about! ;-)
I’d say it is likely more a targeting strategy. I’ve tried on all browser and more to get my password reset. I even followed all their instructions. The thing refuses to email it to me and support wanted me to send them a photo ID. My photo ID is none of their business honestly. That fact that I sent my issue to them via my registered email should have been more than enough. Where are all the other easy reset features everyone else provides. Text and Security Questions?
Truly bizarre … I truly hope they streamline this process to bring it up to speed with how other online sites handle this…
Hi Neal
I also just got restricted account.
Im a recruiter who is recruiting candidates and needed to send job offer to potential candidates as there was no result of ads on linkedin site.
How can they block such activities ?
they provide this service for mainly recruiters right ?
If they take away such activities from recruiters we can not work.
I wasted lots of time !
Can we all together to make lawsuit ?
they are taking away of right to contact people as their service is connecting people.
Linkedin is making damege for all of us who got restriction !!!
Hi Kevin, by definition, when you use LinkedIn, you are playing in their playground. In other words, they make the rules ;-)
Really interesting thread.. Thanks Neal Schaffer for keeping it going (Since 2010 unbelievably!).
My story is similar with many here (I became somewhat more active).. My account was suspended a few days back (21-july-2015).. I have sent Customer care a request, hope they respond within the next two weeks- since that seems to be the norm.
LinkedIn is a very valuable platform for professional Networking, I do hope they restore back my profile as I am currently the only Administrator to two company page.
I would update back here as soon as things get remedied it sure would give someone hope hopefully.
Thanks for keeping the Thread going @Neal
Thanks Kelly – I’m sorry to hear about what happened to you. If time is money, then perhaps a paid subscription to LinkedIn might not be a bad idea. I would tend to believe that support to paid members will be better than support to unpaid members. I only mention this because you are the administrator of two company pages as well … either way, best of luck and do let us know how and when it is resolved!
I’d like to add that if you expect support to be better as a paying customer, then you are going to be sorely disappointed. I was a Premium subscriber (read: paying customer) at the time my account was suspended. I was unable to speak with anyone, I got the same low level of support as anyone else. A couple of days later my account was reactivated with an apology note. (Whoop de doo – yes, that was my reaction too.)
I learned something though during that two day interval. While happily taking my money on a monthly basis, LinkedIn, as a matter of policy, has no interest in conversing with me. The first thing I did when my account reactivated was to cancel my Premium subscription. There has to be a quid pro quo. If I am paying money to a service provider, that provider had better be willing to talk with me if there’s a problem or if I need something on an urgent basis. Since then, I happily use LinkedIn as a service but not as my primary business contact service since I no longer see them as a responsible custodian for my business interactions.
I’d refer LinkedIn to Amazon if they would be interested in checking out a model for a successful technology company. Amazon has one of the best support infrastructures I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with. OK, so as a free service they don’t have to be Amazon, but there’s quite a distance between LinkedIn and Amazon and believe me, LinkedIn has plenty of room for improvement.
Wow – I stand corrected Yossi! Thanks for sharing your experience with us!
It’s worthwhile to google ‘linkedin class action’ to get a sense of just how evil this company is.
And a big shout out to Edelson PC as a protector of consumer rights. They actually returned my call when I was having difficulty accessing my account, and when my account access was restored, we dropped the issue. However, if there are a sufficient number of wronged parties, it might be worthwhile for a group of users to give these folks a call. There might be a class action here.
http://www.edelson.com/
Thanks for the report Yossi!
My LinkedIn account has been temporarily restricted, I am running some jobs advert $974. I have send mails/ticket to LinkedIn but no respond for the past 24 hours. This is sad.
Did you contact the Advertising Team? They might be able to help you faster!
My account is still restricted.And they tell me to supply my identification.I ask them the reason that my account been suspended.But they don’t tell me the reason.Maybe someone should know the reason.And I will be very thankful.
I hope that you can find someone at LinkedIn Customer Service that will explain things a little better! That sounds bizarre!
my account has been restricted,i dont knw why
I am through with LinkedIn. I’ve been a paying customer – Jobseeker Premium. I am a responsible professional with close to 30 years in I.T. Today, one day after accepting the position of CIO for a technology company, my account is suddenly suspended. Is it possible that many members of this company decided to visit my LinkedIn profile to check out their new CIO? Well, isn’t that what LinkedIn is there for???
So ultimately, what do we have here? A buggy / poorly constructed platform with zero support. I used to rely on LinkedIn, but no more. If I ever get my profile reinstated, I am going to simply place a link there to my own site where I will publish my content. And they can forget about seeing another dime from me.
That is really shocking – I do hope that they read this and reach out to you to rectify this situation …
LinkedIn has gone crazy. They are asking for government ID proofs now. I have shared the same with them and waiting to hear back.
Really unable to understand what they will do with the ID.
Wow – I hope your situation gets resolved soon!
Hi Neal & all!
Happy news to share.
Linkedin removed my account restrictions a day before. My account was locked for more than 8 months. I have been patient these many months and I have made a request to lift my account restriction. Finally, they have removed the restriction this time. Here is my learning, be patient for some months and obey their rules, be active on Linkedin, contribute to their community and request them to remove restrictions on your account. Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Sankar
That’s great to hear Sankar – congrats!
Almost 5 years passed since this post was written, but Today even Linkedin is doing the same….. My account got high restriction and I was wondering what has happened as I didn’t do anything new…. But reading this post I realized Oh, yes…. I shared an article from my website which received a lot of traffic….. Holly shit…………………
Wow – I can’t believe that things haven’t improved Angelica. I do hope you can get access to the right people in LinkedIn Customer Service and get your situation resolved ASAP.
ya hi this is carl my account has been restricted can any one say me how to get it back i step process or provide me the URL for getting back account,,,
HI
Is 2015 and my account was restricted I do not know why, I asked the customer services and received several reasons, one I was misrepresenting myself, second customer service said they have a patent software that identify bad behavior. I asked them to show me proof of both things I being accused they said they can’t. Then customer services asked me to send a copy of my government ID or passport to them and then only then they can take the restriction away. I told them ok I will if we talk on the phone or I come to your office, customer service responded we only do business online we do not have an office. Then I said ok you are not the government to be asking for passports or government ID, I will have my lawyer contact you this i not legal or sound right to me. Later then send me a message saying sorry we made a mistake your account is back to normal. Has any had Linked ask you for government ID or passport??
I have not had that personally Marie, but I think there are others in this chain who HAVE been asked that…
hi Marie they also me for government id proof what should i do for it,, please reply me Marie,,,
Marie… add me to the ever-growing number of puzzled users that LinkedIn has demanded Govt info, signatures, and photos from (see my replies to Neal on this thread below). I advise to NOT give LinkedIn anything. they are opening themselves up to a very embarrassing and damaging class action law suit with this behavior and I, for one, will not tolerate being bullied for my personal information by any individual or company ever! I encourage you and anyone else who must suffer these indignities to stand united against these shadowy corporate practices. Big companies such as LinkedIn must be held accountable for exploiting and depriving the use and management of people’s personal and professional information. You have my support!!
Why my linkedin account is suspended? What was wrong from my side? If you have any silly reasons to suspended my account then why are you not intimating to us in advance? Is it wrong to search any information on your site? Please answer
This is a blog that is not affiliated with LinkedIn. You will have to contact LinkedIn Customer Service to find out why. The comments on this blog will also give you advice as to the experiences of others. Wishing you the best of luck in resolving your problem…
Unfortunately and due to not frequently used, after logged in and changed the cover image, it showed me an invitation to all my connections. And I mistakenly without knowing or keeping all selected, I invited all the members in the connection. Probably due to which my company page is “Temporarily Restricted”. Can you urgently advise the steps how to un-restrict my company page?
How do I remove restrictions from my LinkedIn account?
What restrictions do you speak of?
I mean adding people restrictions
Sorry Sherif but there are several types of adding people restrictions that LinkedIn has that I have heard of. Can you be a bit more specific? Then I can provide you more specific advice!
Thanks,
Neal
Why are you guys kept on complaining it. even I myself was restricted to LinkedIn, I have already created no more than 10 accounts and the recent 2 account were upgraded to premium but still I was restricted. I even didn’t do anything about it. I just created it, I only have 5 views as well and have 5 connections. After that all, I am not sure why it happens.
I would suggest to you guys, to stop complaining it. Instead leave it and look for some options. We are using http://www.mosaichub.com/ this is very working as well. you might want to try it.
If you know something like this as well , do let me know.
It may be worth checking if anyone else is having problems? Google “is linkedin down” and a number of sites will come up which show if there is a problem at the moment
Hi,
I just got the “LinkedIn is Momentarily Unavailable” after some heavy candidate searching. I tried the account a couple of hours later and it’s still the same.
Just to check. Do I wait and it automatically lets me back in after 24 hours or so or should I immediately contact customer service?
Is customer_service@linkedin.com the best to use, and what info do I give them. I guess the email for my account and my linkedin public url to identify my account.
Thanks for helping.
I would immediately contact them. Not sure of the right email address … I would follow the links on their customer support page. Good luck to you!
I am locked out of my account probably because of being to active and look at profiles so they would look at mine yet linked says profile views matter.
I think the media may want to have a look at these 403 error issues and people being penalized for generating traffic to there profiles which is what linkedin themselves are asking people to do.
Also with accounts getting suspended or people being locked out of there accounts is enough to get media attention over this. It is still going on now in 2015 of all things. I think its time LinkedIn questionable policy’s was being covered by the press
Thanks for the comment Gareth, and really sorry to hear about what’s happened to you. Indeed, it is 2015 and these things are still happening several years after I wrote this blog post …
Hello sir,with the greatest respect am having a big challenge about my account being restricted and am really getting worried for almost a month now,i wake up just to log into my account and it was restricted and all effort and numerous mails sent has proven futile,so please am appealing to the LinkedIn team to kindly have it fixed and activated for me,thank you
I hope that the LinkedIn Customer Support team can help you …
Please help me because my account has been restricted and am really worried,could you please have it rectified and resolved it asap for me sir.
You can only contact the Linked In customer service – and keep reminding them until they do something. The last time it took me weeks, while they kept telling me there was nothing wrong. I would suggest you don’t upgrade to a paying account with them
Many thanks for the response Vivian,well am left with no choice than to keep waiting whether the will do something about it because am getting fedup
How do you contact customer service? All I ever get is a link right back to their stupid articles. And a few questions and nothing happens!
I sure would like to read it
Open Letter to LinkedIn
Sep 20 2014
Dear LinkedIn Hidden Ones
I have been forced to cancel my premium LinkedIn account because it isn’t working for me and I would like you to note the following comments:
Just recently I have apparently been flagged several times, I believe, out of spite by anonymous persons or a person
This has resulted in no one being able to view my profile because it has disappeared and my articles either becoming invisible or appearing without my name on them
I would describe myself as an ideal networker. Since commencing an account on LinkedIn, I have never once promoted myself or attempted any form of selling or advertising. The one exception to this is recently I made use of LinkedIn to publish two articles about Ebola. As the world governments were not acting, I did the little I could in the interests of saving precious lives. Of course, no one can access my articles because I have been flagged. As if it wasn’t difficult enough already to get through to people, especially as the media have not been doing their job. I should mention that the charity I was “promoting” is a construction industry led charity in the UK and therefore does have something to do with business
Since joining LinkedIn I have noticed the following articles and posts (I did not flag anybody because I have always believed in engaging people in rational conversation, and listening to people even though I don’t agree with them. I believe the pen is mightier than the sword.In fact I believe anonymous flagging is a despicable practice):
•Posts blatently advertising products and services with no other purpose than that – these never get flagged, even in groups where I have been flagged wrongly when I haven’t been advertising!
•Posts having no mention or reference to any business and which blapheme God
•Posts having no mention or reference to any business which slander the Christian religion
•Posts having no mention or reference to any business which slander the Muslim religion
•Posts which insult and degrade Muslims personally
•Posts which spout undisguised hatred of British people
•Posts which are anti-semitic
•One post which called on people to blow up the Tower of London
•One post which called on people to attack the US Navy
•Posts spewing hate on the whole female sex (oddly enough I’ve yet to see one spewing hate on the whole male sex!)
One of the most outrageous things about your recent suspensions of my account is that you deliberately did not tell me about it, just so you would be able to continue taking my money even though no premium services were available to me. I only know it happens when my contacts tell me they can’t find me! In one case my post disappeared from a group, and the group leader contacted me and asked why I had removed an important post!
During my time on LinkedIn I have helped many contacts in various ways – for free. In some cases I have spent a considerable amount of time and money helping out contacts who were in a mess with something, and I put my expertise at their disposal. I normally tell any new contacts that they can contact me if they think I can assist them with anything. I enjoy helping people and have a lot of business experience which I wanted to share. LinkedIn seems hell bent on stopping me from doing that
Perhaps I should also point out that as I am semi retired I have no reason to promote my services – I don’t mind doing the occasional job but don’t want to work full time and don’t want to over encourage work offers
The only time I post comments which have nothing to do with work, is to counter someone who has posted an article or comment which itself had nothing to do with work or was offensive. Of course, such people don’t like being countered, no matter how reasonable or polite you are
What LinkedIn is becoming is a free-for-all for irrational, hateful, bigotted people who are totally unprofessional and do not possess the ability to network with others in a considerate, caring and helpful way. I want to see the world of business becoming the good thing it is supposed to be, because with an ethical base it can make so many people’s lives better. It can make the world a better place. You could have been part of that process
You are fast becoming a network of spite. You are alienating large numbers (just google yourself!) of genuine professionals who have been willing to pay for premium accounts but are fast becoming fed up to the back teeth with you
If you want to become the network of haters and bigots who want to destroy people carry on but if you want to recover your original purpose then I suggest some high level brainstorming
Yours faithfully
Vivian
Very well said Vivian
Thank you for posting this
Hi Vivian
The link you gave https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140920133348-263357853-open-letter-to-linkedin?trk=mp-reader-card)
Does not seem to point to any article. Do you have the correct link?
Thanks
Oh well it may be because overnight I received a message saying my profile was up and running but now it’s not, so maybe it’s disabled. It’s too long to reproduce here. I may put it on twitter
Me again Steve. I just tried the link from your post and it works for me. That’s the thing that is so annoying because I put loads of work in and think everything is fine till my connections tell me I’m invisible!
Well, I have had so many issues now with my account that I will remove all my details from LinkedIn as soon as I have contacted all the connections I’ve made! It started with my having a premium account, and I didn’t know all kinds of things were happening unbeknown to me presumably so they could keep taking my money! I therefore downgraded to a free account. I also published an article on pulse about LinkedIn, and I think that may be they don’t like it! (see https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140920133348-263357853-open-letter-to-linkedin?trk=mp-reader-card) Since then it’s gone haywire. I can’t share anything with anyone. I can’t post in groups. I can’t comment in groups. My contacts can’t find my profile despite my being able to go into it. One group where I was a top contributor got in touch and demanded to know why I had removed an article I had posted, and which interested them. I hadn’t removed it of course Linked In had. I also had a message in my inbox which they removed – there was an empty message saying “This message has been removed by linkedin customer service”!!! That totally freaked me out! I have three open tickets with customer service, and they keep either emailing me and saying an issue has been resolved (when it hasn’t) or they say they are working hard to try and resolve it. Today, I discovered that AFTER the first of my customer service tickets and AFTER I had ceased to be able to use my account, that my account had been restricted! Yet not one of the customer service emails informed me of that! I think the customer service department actually entertains themselves by playing around with customer accounts! I think they really are creepy and perhaps even positively sick. Thing is they are immune – nobody can touch them and they can do what they like. And how do we know if customer service people aren’t spamming us, and sending us Trojans (both of which I’ve had shortly after contacting customer services)
The sooner they cease to exist the better
That’s a scary situation Vivian … I just don’t know why they would do all of that to you?
Yes it is scary! It’s either because of the article I wrote or I’m being hacked. Either way I’m getting out soon!
I can’t even log in to read that! I am totally restricted.
Hi Neal,
I have a new one for you. My ability to endorse other members in my network has been taken away for 2 weeks so far for my endorsing too many people.
I have over 6000 people in my network so yes I have many connections and often I have reason to endorse them but I was not aware that being active in my network was a crime
Thanks Steve – that IS a new one!
I have been restricted and cannot send any invitations.
I had long discussions with Support and here is the exact messages:
“LinkedIn Response 09/12/2014 16:35
Hi Leon,
Thanks for your patience and my sincere apologies for the delay and inconvenience this issue is causing you. I received your request to be escalated and I was able to go in and review your account history. I am unable to go re-instate your invitations.
The LinkedIn User Agreement states that members should only connect with individuals they know and trust. Due to this policy, it is in everyone’s best interest to have a maximum connection limit in place. This limit cannot be increased or modified for any of our members. We suggest that in order for you to connect with others that you review your current list of connections and remove those that may no longer have value.
We will need for you to complete this action in order for us to grant additional invitations to your account. As an ongoing practice it would be beneficial for you to constantly manage your connection list and to only maintain those that bring you the highest relationship value.
Thanks for seeing value in LinkedIn’s Invitation feature and for your assistance in making LinkedIn a professional and trustworthy site.
Regards,
Alicia
LinkedIn Trust & Safety”
Thanks for sharing your experience with us Leon!
Hi Leon,
Now, did they remove your restrictions? Reply me. My account has been restricted to connect with others for more than 6 months.
When i tried to enter in to my account it shows an error message from last 7 days – “Your LinkedIn account has been temporarily restricted ”
1. Please please let me know what exactly the problem ?
2. when it will recover ?
3. if recovers does anything change in my connections?
i have sent an email to linkedin 5 times i got the reference number but they didn’t responded till data….
please help me out from this….
Hello – this blog is not affiliated in any way with LinkedIn.com, so you will need to contact their Customer Service in order to get your issue resolved. Thank you for your understanding.
My LinkedIn account has been temporarily restricted. i therefore request you to open it.
I am not in any way affiliated with LinkedIn … you will have to visit http://www.linkedin.com for help. Thank you for your understanding.
I believe the appropriate response, Neal, is, “Shazzam!”
If only.
Hi. Neal. About 7 years without talking to you. Surprised this post is from 2010 and still valid issue.
Today, my LinkedIn Account was put on temporary hold with restricted access. Reads as follows:
“LinkedIn is Momentarily Unavailable
LinkedIn is momentarily unavailable but should return in a few moments.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Please wait a moment, then follow this link to return to the home page. You may need to sign in again.”
I have no clear idea of what generated or trigger the temporary freezen.
Fancy Names are use by everyone. So I do too.
What I cannot clear out is the real source.
1. I was testing the new “similar profile” that appears in the lower right corner of any page when you accept someone. I confess I did a lot of clicking and research using that mechanism. But while doing nothing happens
2. I do see a lot of posts and I open them up very fast.
Now I do not know weather my restriction came from seeing to many profiles, or too many post or both or the speed at which I was reading them. 4 years ago I was confused with an automated robot, and I had to prove I was just a high speed headhunter.
No idea if LinkedIn checks total number of clicks in a certain period, the speed at which you do them or total page views?
If what they report are total amounts of clicks or page views, I must say I am going to delete 2 groups of 15.000 members each and deleted all the 40 groups on which I am so as to save on clicks and page views to finance my profile viewing.
Once I have an explanation form them, I will publish the finding.
I am thankful to your post because Restricted Profiles do not get attended unless you report A ticket to LinkedIn Customer Services, since they work FIFO. Otherwise you will never get access to your account again.
Hi Justin! Hope your issue got cleared – has your account been reinstated?
Same issue, here. Been passed to person #4 (in just 7 hours, through a lot of begging and pleading). They still don’t understand what the issue is. I think most of the staff don’t know of this restricted mode.
Hopefully they will resolve it for you soon enough – thanks for letting us all know your situation.
Apparently if your computer/browser is used to login to two different linkedin accounts, you account will go into High Restricted state, and you will be asked to provide a government issued photo id to restore it back.
This is really odd, becz many families would be using the same computer to access their accounts, isn’t it?
I don’t know if they’re looking at IP addresses or other things, but the TOS does say only one person per account, and I’m sure they are doing things to try to get smarter and weed out faked accounts. Unfortunately, they still might be working on the ideal solution here…
Hello Neal,
Almost 4 years later and this thread is still going. I’m impressed by your patience but no so with LI.
However due to an unrelated issue I was also asked by LI to send in photos of Govt issued ID. Ok, so I get that it’s to prevent identity theft, but because it’s something I’d never heard of before where a social network can ask this of you I came across your article about wholesale suspensions of LI accounts often for no good reason.
I think LI’s end goal is to get every member to comply with their new verinet security procedures. So they suspend your account for ‘over-clicking’ for the express purpose of getting a copy of your ID/Passport online. Which IMO is open to abuse and can lead to widespread ID theft, leading to more stringent ID required worldwide such as verichip.
Btw – will not be contributing to their cause. I’m not sending any copies of my ID online as we all know the internet is a safe place to store personal information. NOT!
LI a social network turned police database.
Really sorry to hear about what’s happening to you … in all honesty, I think it is bizarre for ANY social network to ask for government-issued ID unless you did something REALLY unusual…
Yes, I’ve read that too. It’s outrageous. I would definitely leave an online service before providing that level of ID. I won’t even use, for example, ecard services that ask for my credit card info WHILE saying the card is “free,” and not displaying which cards are actually free and which are paid by subscription. I think LinkedIn may be overestimating its own value.
It is pretty surprising, that’s for sure!
But if you do not send them Govt Issued Id – your LinkedIn account will remain disabled. Worse is that you cannot even delete it as you cannot login,
And you cannot re-register with same email id i guess.
This exact thing happened to me today after I discovered that my account was restricted yesterday. The vague reason that they gave me was
“Due to the activity we’ve found associated with this account, we’d first like to see a scanned image of a valid government issued photo ID (for example: a driver’s license or passport) that has your … Note: We request that prior to submitting your government issued ID, you cover the identification number on the copy of the document. … Please note that if this issue comes up again, we may require you to present this information again.”
I am at a loss as to why they would request this and how they would be able to verify without the unique ID number. This seems to be a violation by LI at many levels.
Actually, not the “exact thing”. I have never mass-invited anyone on LI. So I am not certain as to the reason for the restriction.
Wow – that is truly bizarre Sheldon! Were you being active outside of invites?
Can you imagine how you’d feel if you’d given LI your i.d., then found out about the Heartbleed Bug? I live in Canada, and our Internal Revenue Service had to shut down for a week to deal with it. 900 people’s most personal info was hijacked anyway. The whole country was given an extra week to file taxes. It was that bad.
Did you notice LI didn’t even have the decency to comment on whether they were affected by Heartbleed? Not a peep.
Nowaynowaynoway would I give a social media site my i.d.! Particularly knowing how irresponsible LI is anyway, what with arbitrary suspensions—while not allowing you to block genuine psychos. I was being stalked, and all they’d say is, “Tell the group manager.” I told them the psycho was stalking me from group to group. They would not let me block them in any way.
If such extremely basic functions are not available to users, who are they to even ask for our i.d.? Even Facebook is safer!
You make a good point, in that although many sites did update their users about Heartbleed, LinkedIn didn’t.
I also feel the need to send in personal identification is bizarre. I wish they would at least make a public statement about that because they are the only one I’ve ever heard of who request it.
When I first joined LinkedIn, I would sent out hundreds of invitations within the span of a day. This resulted of my account being blocked a couple of times. I first thought the reason I had been blocked was because I had sent too many invitations. But I later found out that wasn’t the reason. Instead, the reason was because I had viewed too many profiles.
You see, unlike other people that send mass invitations, I prefer the view the profiles of members before inviting them to connect because I believe in both quantity and quality. There are many people on LinkedIn that I just don’t want to invite. Sure, I would gladly accept them in my network if THEY invited me. But I would never use my 3 000 limit supply to invite them myself. Because of that, I always took the habit of viewing profiles before inviting people. This has resulted of me being blocked a couple of times because LinkedIn said that I viewed an “unusual amount of profiles” and thought I was using the information to exploit it elsewhere. Talk about being paranoid. But my blocks never lasted more than 24 hours and definitely not two weeks. I remember one of my blocks lasting as little as a mere two hours.
So from my own experience you can spend all day long on LinkedIn without any consequences if you stick to your news feed and your groups. But as soon as you do anything involving profiles (whether by viewing them or by searching them), then you’re putting yourself at the risk of being eventually temporarily blocked, if done in great quantity within a short period of time.
Wanted to clarify something
While LinkedIn discourage mass invitations, it is permitted and it is not a practice that will eventually get you blocked, as long as you don’t view profiles nor use LinkedIn’s search engine in the process. So the safest way to do mass invitation without risking being blocked is by inviting people through the “People you might know” section. However, this could lead to another problem. Sure, you won’t risk being blocked for viewing or searching too many profiles. But by inviting people that you haven’t even looked at the profiles first, you may end up getting IDKs which could ultimately lead to a restriction requiring you to enter an e-mail for all futures invites. And unlike the block for viewing too many profiles which is only temporary, a restriction is permanent until you take actions to remove it. On the bright side, you can still use LinkedIn while you’re restricted, which isn’t the case when you’re blocked.
Good clarifications Jonathan – thanks for taking the time to share!
I don’t know why my account was restricted. I needed access. I have written to the help center 3 times. And this is my 1st time. I think its pretty rude to just block access. I am also a paid member for using the recruiter access. Please allow/grant access to my account. I am not sure how else to proceed. Thanks !
Hi Priya, I’m really sorry to hear what has happened. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I have no affiliation with LinkedIn, so you will have to work with them. But if you haven’t tried, I would try to reach out to them on Twitter or another social media channel in addition to email. Hope the advice helps – and please do let us know how it gets resolved! Good luck…
I’ve been restricted from using LinkedIn twice now – both times for sharing informative articles with no business connection and no advertising.
Unfortunately people seems to feel inclined to report messages as spam when they see links to webpages… My advise, never include a hyperlink in a comment on an article, or on the comment of another person.
It shouldn’t be this way really, but their support seems slow for a non-paying member, so I guess their resource is low………………I’ve written to them several times pleading with them to be more understanding that people aren’t always in the right when they hit the spam button………….as a matter of fact, Forbes Magazine have called out my articles as ‘intereting’, ‘informative’ and ‘well thought out’ and I’ve had personal thank you’s… and almost 600 likes.
Linkedin’s conduct is wrong but I doubt it’ll change – look around the web and there’s reams of people complaining of the same happening to them!
Just to demonstrate that I’m not soliciting business, here’s one of the links that got me banned: http://www.lateralthinkingsolutions.net/blog/intrepreneur-definition.php
Simon – I am sensing a trend here – please see what happened to LinkedIn User … this might be a new (and dangerous) trend here…
Here’s the article that got me suspended in an animal industry group: http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horse-sense-and-sensibility/archive/2013/12/04/20-do-s-and-don-ts-for-being-an-awesome-veterinary-client.aspx
Inexplicable. I suppose the only people now welcome on LI are ones who are geniuses at short Tweets or constructing interview questions. I happen to be a person who enjoys researching, sharing and discussing published information with peers.
Wow … #speechless.
Getting banned for posting links to articles in magazines is probably not down to linked in but the individual group leader. It may help if you start a discussion with some of your opinions and asking for comments. You could also start a discussion by pasting the whole article instead of a link, but the very fact there is a facility on LI to make workable links does suggest it should be ok. Have you tried emailing the group leader and asking them to publish your discussion?
Neal, for some reason there’s no Reply button under Vivian’s comment. But here’s my reply: Vivian, you should join the LinkedIn team. You fit right in. I do not lick my oppressor’s boots. I out them and join with others to change things. It’s called self respect.
My account is suspended, and they’ve neither sent me a warning nor are they replying to my inquiries. I don’t spam, and my Connection requests are limited to about one per week.
However, my discussion threads are lively, and I respond to nearly every comment people give me. This results in a high number of people viewing my profile. My discussions are usually around an article or inspirational quote I’ve posted relevant to my groups.
Could the high number of POSITIVE interactions actually be triggering LI’s suspension? I feel better reading this thread, knowing they give knee jerk responses. It’s truly puzzling.
What’s even more puzzling: I had occasion to report a user who was relentlessly spamming ME across various groups, in PMs, in my personal email. LI refused to do a thing about that!
Wow – that’s one of the most bizarre cases I’ve ever heard! I really hope that someone from the powers that be are reading these comments and looking at ways to improve their customer service!
They finally replied, Neal. It was a form letter, saying that I had EITHER spammed or phished via group discussions, OR sent group members spam messages. No specifics, nothing I can look at or refute.
Of further interest: it’s impossible for me to spam group members, as I have the groups feature turned off that allows contact with non-connections! I did this to stop spam directed at ME.
They asked me to promise to be a good member in future. How can I promise to not to what I didn’t do, and to not do what they didn’t tell me I did? Passive aggressive management at its worst!
I had the same problem. The thing that gets me is someone can report you but you have no redress. The person you reported could have reported you falsely just out of spite
Exactly, Vivian. It’s like a witch hunt! How can they not look at evidence? In fact, I suspect this is exactly what may have happened. I started systematically posting inspirational quotes and cool articles related to my groups, and got a ton of positive response and some business, too.
I could actually see the envy from some people who’d been there longer, and were not doing well. In fact, a couple started asking me calculated questions that wasted my time. You know, the kind of questions that have a barb in them, and you HAVE to answer or otherwise you look as if you’re hiding something. “But isn’t it true that it can be difficult to use the program you represent? And I had an experience with someone in your field who blahblahblah.” Sheeer bitchery/prickery.
My impression of LI: it’s a clunky old database invented by archaic business guys, as simply a passive place to post your resume. I joined in ’06, but didn’t get active till ’12, for that reason. LI has NO clue how social media works, and what it’s meant to do. I think they’re years behind.
If they want a vibrant, healthy site, they need to catch up. I was considering a paid membership, but not now. Do they really think someone who’s been accused and suspended without evidence IN A FORM LETTER, is now going to give them, what, $300 annually? Not a chance.
I finally received an answer that is so bizarre, so puzzling, it taught me that procedures on LI are completely arbitrary. Apparently somebody(s) reported that I posted a link to an article in a well known, well regarded professional magazine, as “spam.”
It wasn’t even my own article, nor do I work for this magazine. There was nothing violent, sexual, graphic, political or controversial in the article. Nothing at all potentially offensive. LI’s reply made it clear they hadn’t read the article, just responded to the spam allegation.
I’m blown away. So now we know. If you disagree with a point made in a balanced journal (or just don’t like the poster), all you have to do ispush the “spam” button—and you can get that person blocked from LI without a reason given, and clearly, without investigation.
That’s it for me. I’ll leave my profile up, but if their procedures are this arbitrary, I’m not participating. Certainly not going to pay for membership!
Well it is beneficial to know that this is happening to many others aside from myself! This is an unjust happening and IMO just goes to show, that bad/jealous people sometimes get away with injustices to other! We can only hope that since so many seem to live by the sword…
And “trashbook” (facebook) is probably one of the worst!
Thanks for Ur time in informing us of the conclusion of Ur matter!
That is truly bizarre … I don’t know what to say! Has anyone else reading these comments have this same experience?
MY LINKEDIN ACCOUNT IS RESTRICTED ,IT SAYS DEFAULT PLEASE HELP ME.
Welbeminah – email LI customer services
I got restricted too in linkedin. I was surprise as they restricted me without warning. Pretty disappointed with linkedin management. How do I Activate it back? I hope the linkedin management can improve their social network.
The only way to get reactivated is to contact LinkedIn Customer Support Edwin. I do wish you the best of luck and hope everything gets resolved soon!
Edwin – put urgent on your request to customer services and ask them why you were restricted. You will probably have to agree to never being naughty again, even if you don’t know what you did!
Hi,
My account was closed because I have denounced two fake profiles.
Thanks for the feedback Daniel. Do you have actual physical proof of this?
Lisa – I do sympathise. I have left comments previously on this thread. One thing that I think is strange is that they asked for your passport to prove who you are. PayPal tried doing that to me when I reached my limit, and I made a string of complaints as I have been the victim of ID theft before now. However, after a while, they sent me an email telling me how to lift the limit, which I did, and I didn’t have to send them a copy of my passport after all! It makes you wonder if fraudsters get jobs in places like that!
After my initial LI account restriction, I’ve found that their customer service are quite good and give prompt replies now. I’m a bit paranoid, so if I’m not sure if I might break their rules, I sent them a message to ask them.
It’s the fact that you can break their rules without knowing that gets me, and also that someone can report you as a spamster just because they are in a bad mood that day! And LI won’t tell you precisely what you did! You have to guess!
It is a shame because I am finding they are a marvellous tool, and the people you connect with are so helpful, as are the various forums
I agree Vivian and this is quite scary! We never know whose engaging in these fraudulent activities right under social media administration! I had wondered the same thing and after that, there were no problems. At that time I found out who the rascals were reporting my profile. Just this morning LinkedIn got in touch with me to solve the name issue. Because I put my initial of my last name since there are few people sharing the same last name. I posted on Facebook and tweeted like crazy on Facebook citing my frustration. They acted quite fast and my restriction had been lifted! The powers that be with social media! it did the trick! The funny thing is LinkedIn claims that it does not penalized innocent users to suspend account based on high profile clicks and views. Really?! I told them google it and you see where the complaints lies. After that, they were tongue tied.
Neal,
You are so much helpful and responsive than Linkedin Customer Service. It’s quite unfortunate given so much $ has invested in this company. Quite a frustrating experience for a user like me who never spam, has legitimate contacts and owns a very active group. One day I just couldn’t login and receive a “temporarily restricted” message. I think my profile is deleted as well as I conduct a google a search. Now should I use another working email account to setup another account or should I continue waiting in vain for Linkedin to response? Thanks Neal
You’re very welcome Martin. If you wait more than a week or two and you get no response, you might want to take matters into your own hands and start anew … either way, good luck with it!
I am not satisfied with your answer Neal! Professionals have spend a lot great deal of time building connections! for me I’m very well known public person and I have nearly 700 connections on Linkedin. I have been restricted the second time now. First they asked for my proof of identification and provided them with my passport and driver’s license to show that my account is verified. Now it is restricted again, Do you honestly think business professionals who put so much into the profile to start all over again!? I don’t think so. Linkedin need to step up and start fixing the problem or else they are going to face dire consequences. Namely a lawsuit for penalizing innocent users for something they had no control over or didn’t do. After all this is suppose to be a social media outlet for professionals all over the world. If you are an advocate to help us, I suggest you take this up the social media administrators out there whoever they are and show them the countless complaints and have a petition put together so that Linkedin does not abuse it’s power and policy and hurting businesses in process. Trust me I have seen so much abuse on Linkedin! Linkedin doesn’t give a damn!
I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with my answer Lisa – as you know I have no relationship or affiliation with LinkedIn, so I am only speaking about the experiences that users like you have told me. I do believe that the issues you bring up are serious – and I hope that LinkedIn is listening!
Add me to the “high restricted” list! I joined LinkedIn a week ago… Hubby a chartered member… He has never received a restriction!
Sorry to hear about that Maureen … I guess it can happen to the best of us ;-)
I also got a bit of a shock when I joined LI and a few weeks later was “high restricted”! They did reply in about two days and re-instated me, after I promised never ever to do it again (except I hadn’t done anything!) They told me I had been putting promotional materials on there (which I hadn’t) and then said I was sending invites to people I didn’t know. I told them 1) I did know everyone I invited 2) some people might not have known my married name as it was a while since I’d been in contact 3) some people on linked in only have a name and no other details – I might have got the wrong person unwittingly.
The thing that gets me is that it’s so illogical and the same rules don’t appear to apply to everybody. Also, maybe someone didn’t want to connect and instead of ignoring they complain – I don’t know. It is all very Kafka-esque and I’m on tenterhooks everytime I go on there now
Very bizarre indeed Vivian – almost as if there was another person out there pretending that they were you doing all of those things! I like the fact that LinkedIn is trying to crack down on fake profiles, but they need to work harder to distinguish the real people from the fakes!
I’ve just found my account has been put on “high restricted”! My profile is no longer visible and there is now no record of me being on there! I have emailed them but had no response yet. I’ve only just started using LI and have no idea what I’m supposed to have done. LI seemed such a super idea but I must say I’ve totally lost confidence in it. If they give me my account back I’m not sure I’ll make use of it any more. I can’t believe they will keep going when they behave like this
Thank you for your comment. It is amazing what some of you have experienced. I do hope that LinkedIn resolves your issues quickly!
my linkedin account is not working ,when I try to open it is showing default .please help me i want to use it.
The only people who can help you are LinkedIn Customer Service! Please contact them!
When I login my linkedin account then its show me that message: Your LinkedIn account has been temporarily restricted, How to solve this problem and open my account. Please Rply
You need to contact LinkedIn Customer Support ASAP!
I just got a high restricted suspension. I was doing some research for a job hunt and interview to get to know better some people’s backgrounds who are first connections and inviting other locals to connect to improve my profile regionally…I had no idea using it for job hunting, filling out an application with a former boss’ new position info and improving my profile for an upcoming interview are bad. I put that LinkedIn profile on I don’t know how many resumes. What will HR people think?
You should test your LinkedIn profile link to see what other people would see if they go to it. Although you might not be able to access your account because of the restriction, others may still be able to see it. In that case, HR people won’t know! But you still have to have the restriction lifted so that you can update your LinkedIn profile once you find your next job!
Yes, excellent article. I had my Linkedin account ‘restricted’ 3 days ago without any warning or communication. When I raised a customer support call to Linkedin, the response I received was that ‘It was going to take an unspecified amount of time for them to tell me why I was restricted’. Unbelievable. I have been using Linkedin for business purposes for a number of years with 600+ connections, 50 Groups including 3 of my own. At this point I am seriously questioning whether or not Linkedin represents a dependable service. Thanks for the insights…
Regards…
Wow – really sorry to hear what happened to you. I know that LinkedIn Customer Service recently started a Twitter account so I would definitely try to reach out to them there as well. Best of luck – and do let us know how/when it gets resolved!
the funny thing is, I NEVER use my linkedin account, and I don’t think I’ve ever invited anyone to join my network. I have, however, had a few people recently send ME invitations (that I’ve seen through me email). I finally decided to log into my account, only to find that it’s been high restricted! WTF????
Very weird Sandra … I’ve heard of others with the same situation. Sounds like as you were inactive, maybe someone tried to hack into your account and thus they restricted it. A perfect Catch 22 scenario that can only be resolved by getting in touch with LinkedIn Customer Support…
Hi I have just had an Account High Restricted.
I have no idea what has triggered this at all. I previously had restricted postings, but again no – one will tell me why, or how to correct it or stop it. I respond to posts irregularly, and look at peoples profiles, but that’s it. No on line arguments, or even harsh discussions.
Customer service doesn’t respond, my tickets disappear without trace, and now I cant even access my tickets, and this is for a service that I am paying £150 a year for!
This is draconian, with a verdict of guilty without trial, and without the ability to defend yourself. You cannot get to know who is the complainer, or what the event was that triggered it. Any one with a malicious streak, can attack you without you having any defence.
LinkedIn’s systems need significant improvement in this area, or clearer rules, to protect their paying members.
If you’re a paying customer, if I’m not mistaken, you should be getting priority customer support! I really hope you are able to contact them by email or through social media to rectify your account. When you do, please tell us how it went!
My account is also temporarily restricted , i have sent mail to cust. Service . Do i need to do anything else ?
You might want to try to tweet to them as well Vishal!
My Account is restricted I don’t know why
It’s not fair at all 18 hours a day we are working on Linked in & at last what we get restriction ?
Sorry it’s really hurts when you see your account is restricted is this good no I don’t think so
Can you please let me know how do I get my Account back ?
Please help me
Thank’s
Hi Yusuf, I am really sorry to hear about what happened to your account – but as you can see from the other comments here, the only people that can help you are LinkedIn Customer Service. If they don’t respond to your emails, try to tweet at them on Twitter – they’ve responded to me there recently. Good luck to you!
account was restricted 3 days ago just as I logged in to apply for a SEM job that you can only apply for via Linkedin
still no response
@Surya…how long did it take you to get a response??
Hi Neal,
my Linkedin account is restricted 4 days ago, I wrote four posts support and still did not get an explanation, in the last message I wanted to delete my account if 22nd March does not solve my problem.
Wow – really sorry to hear that Dejan … hoping they will get back to you!
Is it even possible to delete a restricted account… since you cannot even login?
You can only go through LinkedIn Customer Service to resolve this…
glad i am not only one. but still highly annoying! I get tons of requests each week, run 2 groups, have a company page – and sent out maybe one request to connect in the last 3 or 4 months – now all of a sudden I am locked out. have sent two email to customer support, and no replies. this is how they treat their power users?
Don’t know what to tell you Joe – as you can see from the other comments here, they have many issues which go unresolved…
Hi Neal,
Sorry to say that It took around 2 weeks to sort out and to activate the account with LinkedIn Customer care after communicating by mail that too after sending my mail they replied after a week saying that “you’ve sent unsolicited mass mailings and/or promotional materials in messages that appear to be phishing, spam, or abusive in nature” and replying to it i.e, after sending confirmation mail by me saying that “i will adhere to the stated policy and make use of LinkedIn account in a fair way binding to the norms of LinkedIn” they have activated my account but for my surprise is i have neither did marketing nor i have that much time to spend on sending mass mails or materials from Linkedin. Any have its finally got activated. Thanks to them but what i observed is that we have to be careful in accepting and sending invitations and we should delete unnecessary pending requests (if any) which i hope from the account accordingly..
Thanks & Best Regards,
Surya
My account was found restricted this morning when i try to log in. I recently began using LinkedIn account actively. Within the past month, I have been utilizing it as I have found it to be a valuable networking tool. However, today I am restricted and have no idea about it. I have never even sent an invitation to anyone whom i don’t know. My entire network is comprised of people I know personally, either through college or work. It will be interesting to see how their customer service respond to my query.
Thanks for letting us know – and do please let us know how LinkedIn Customer Service responds! Thanks!
Same problem arises when you login from abroad. Was in Germany for a holiday, made 1 too many attempt in activating the link from the e-mail (yes you have to confirm with a email first from an unknown IP address!!!), and BANG locked out. I sent a pissed of request to activate my account, and I got a message from the member that I was not supposed to talk like that, ticket closed! How arrogant! And the employee was annonymous off course. First time I can login again, I quit my account. Linkedin is not the trusthworthy accesible everywhere Rolodex anymore. I move to Pandora on my own server.
Wow – that is too bad. Such a site of professional reputation, yet to treat you like that is really inexcusable…
We have exactly this problem and it’s incredible how disinterested LinkedIn are in providing any kind of support. One of our accounts has been suspended multiple times and all we get is a, ‘you’ve accessed too many pages’ message. The only message we’ve had from support told us that it’s ‘humanly impossible’ for someone to use the account as much as we have, which is why it was suspended. How do they then explain a suspension after 5 days of complete inactivity?
Seems strange this only started to happen after their giant security breach, we changed all our passwords and removed all third party application access, as a security precaution but we’re still getting this error. Maybe they have a bigger problem than they’re letting on and the hackers are still exploiting their database?
So what exactly are they trying to achieve with this crazy automated suspension? It seems like either lazy or over zealous security protocol which reflects a fundamental disregard and understanding of its users. As a paying customer I also expect to talk to a real person when something goes wrong, on the phone if need be, not recieve canned responses from a support rep who couldn’t care less. LinkedIn needs to stop behaving like a lumbering IBM or Microsoft only interested in profit, and more like the businesses savvy, agile social network that it claims to be.
Thanks for letting us know – and hoping that LinkedIn is listening…
Rob, precisely! They make it possible to join 50 groups and send you their own spammy emails pressuring you to be as active as possible, then apparently restrict you for doing so. I’ve never spammed. My posts are relevant content that lead to lively discussions. I get a ton of profile views.
I’m waiting to find out their actual reason for suspending me.
It’s archaic, disrespectful and plain bad business to suspend an account without warning or reason.
Linkedin is suspending and or restricting accounts for reasons that don’t make any sense. Too many or too few profile views? WTF? Networks are about engagement.
Please, either someone build a new network that competes with theirs or lets just file a petition and sue the SH** out of them for this inconvenience.
I’m serious. Lets start a petition now. Anyone know of any good attorneys?
Just look for any digital lawyer – they would love the exposure.. yeah, sick of it too. Because of my activity I have generated over 75k in sales nav accounts for them last year – reward: I had to close my account and re-open, losing 4k connections in the process.
I put my personalized linkedin html link in my email signature for work emails because I work in sales and I think a lot of people click on it because they are curious. I’m almost positive that I was put on restriction for this reason. Why would they let us have a personalized link but then not let us use it? Considering I pay for a business subscription this is ridiculous. I want the money back for every day that I was no allowed to use my account on the site during this month. I’m not a spammer or bothering anyone. I also get a lot of random click because I’m a girl and blonde – people that are straight creeping which is not my fault. Give me a break.
Wow – I am speechless. Certainly there is something wrong with the system if you are being penalized!
I hear ‘ya – but in LinkedIn’s defense, they want each person to create their own profile from their own IP address in order to cut down on fake profiles…
I teach a class in online jobhunting. I set up LinkedIn profiles for my 11 students for them to fill in during class. Now all of their accounts are restricted, probably because I set up the accounts from the same computer. I guess LinkedIn doesn’t want 11 new members?
Same issue… how did u resolve?
My linkedin account got suspended. I just use the Linedin account to accept the invitations now and then and keep track of contacts messages. May onc ein a week I will login. Not sure why my account is suspended. HOw do I reactivate the same?
That is something that only LinkedIn Customer Service can help you with. Good luck – and let us know if you get reactivated!
I hear ‘ya Alfeo!
This just happened to me as well.
Same reason.
Generated a lot of profile views and only for using the feature for which Lin has been created: keep people networked. Now, if they reactivate my account, you can be sure I will move to a different Social Network. Plenty of them out there!
I recently has my account on LI suspended and finally got an email back from Customer Service that the reason is they suspect I own multiple accounts on LI. They want me to reply back to Customer Service and tell them where I am accessing LI and also send over a copy of a government issue ID. It sounds very suspicious. Has anyone received this sort of request?
Never heard of it – I would send LI Customer Service a separate ticket and ask them if they would ever ask for a government issue ID. I don’t think they would.
Yes, LinkedIn is demanding government IDs from users. Amazing that LinkedIn’s privacy team is violating the privacy of its users.
Wow – I’ve never heard of a social networking website demanding that…
Yes, same here. My account was suspended for “suspicious activity.” They won’t restore access until either I send them a scan of a government issued ID OR a notarized letter with my picture and signature. LinkedIN has apparently gone off the deep end and I would seriously suggest people look for an alternative.
I got locked out two days ago and have a hunch it has to do with (a abandoned) attempt to log in LinkedIn with my iPhone. Maybe ‘they’ thought it was a hack……
And now i’m waiting and I need LinkedIn for jobs…. :-(
Sorry to hear about that Frank…it really is incredible the different ways in which people are being restricted on LinkedIn. I do hope your situation works itself out.
WTH! My account access has been suspended as well ………. for what …viewing too many profile???? If not for viewing profiles; y the hell would I even have an account in LinkedIn? This is ridiculous!!!!!!!!
That is ludicrous…hopefully they will reinstate you soon…good luck.
That’s bad news…sorry to hear about the issue. You are the first that I have heard having this problem…I hope that it is not a sign of things to come…
Use LinkedIn infrequently < once a week. Am signed in, try to accept a connection invitation and it wants my e-mail & password even though I'm signed in. When I insert them the screen pops up again with the password blank (an eternal circle). I think LinkedIn's sytem is badly screwed up
I’m Suspended too for 2 days(for now) without any explanation.
I only got this email from the cs(I had a nature pic on my profile- not a human face):
Your profile photo has been removed.
The photo has been removed for the following reason:
The picture is in violation of the LinkedIn Photo Policy.
LinkedIn provides the opportunity for users to upload a photograph to assist other members in recognizing that person. As a professional networking site, there are guidelines to determine which types of photos are appropriate. We consider a photo appropriate as long as it does not contain content that is copyrighted or unauthorized for public distribution and does not contain offensive content. Additionally, if your photo is not an image of yourself or does not contain an actual photograph, it is considered inappropriate. Your photo has been flagged for inappropriate elements and has been removed from your profile.
You are certainly welcome to upload a different photo of yourself to remedy this situation. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us at customer_service@linkedin.com.
Thanks for using LinkedIn!
— The LinkedIn Team
”
Thank you for sharing your information with us and I am sincerely sorry that you have to go through this. The “Flag this photo” feature can be used against innocent people, which it sounds like it has in your case. The funny thing is that there is no place to “Flag this profile” when you see an obvious fake profile. Go figure…
That is Seriously Ridiculous!!! Can’t believe what I’m hearing and the problems that you all, very average LinkedIn users, are having! Why on earth should you be penalized for doing nothing wrong? A-B-S-U-R-D
My friend have account that is restricted without reason! Pls tell me why? and what are the violence action that this social dont allow?
Sorry, Jenny, but I am not in any way related to LinkedIn. You need to ask them directly! Hoping that your friend can get their situation resolved…
Simon – you’re lucky. I received the suspicious activity and account suspended email July 27, reset my password on July 29th, was told account was suspended, put in a CS ticket to get access back, describing the whole situation on July 29th, and have been getting all the emails since. None from customer service and now it’s August 12th. I put in another ticket, referencing the first one, including a copy of the email acknowledging it, so keeping my fingers crossed. This is getting Seriously Ridiculous!
Two weeks? That’s horrible, especially when so many professionals rely on LinkedIn. Thanks for reporting back as it gives those who have their accounts restricted by LinkedIn some expectation as to how long it may take for Customer Service to get back to them…and do get back to us if you ever get an explanation as to why this happened to you in the first place!
Two weeks? That’s horrible, especially when so many professionals rely on LinkedIn. Thanks for reporting back as it gives those who have their accounts restricted by LinkedIn some expectation as to how long it may take for Customer Service to get back to them…and do get back to us if you ever get an explanation as to why this happened to you in the first place!
Just an update on my account situation:
LinkedIn customer service FINALLY got back to me…approx 2 weeks after my initial email. Not only was that frustrating, but I was given absolutely no explanation as to why my account was suspended. I simply received an email that stated that my account was back in working order. I have sent customer service another email asking for an explanation, but have not received a response. I don’t think I will.
Just an update on my account situation:
LinkedIn customer service FINALLY got back to me…approx 2 weeks after my initial email. Not only was that frustrating, but I was given absolutely no explanation as to why my account was suspended. I simply received an email that stated that my account was back in working order. I have sent customer service another email asking for an explanation, but have not received a response. I don’t think I will.
Jon, I am so sorry to hear about your experience. Ever since I blogged about my friend, this has become one of my most popular posts showing that there are many others in the same boat as you. Hopefully LinkedIn is reading these comments and fine-tuning their system so that truly innocent users like yourself are not penalized. Please do get back to us on how long it takes LinkedIn Customer Service to get back to you!
Shame I didn't know about the number of clicks as well as I was going through cleaning my contact list and making sure they have been categorized correctly last night and BANG account suspended.
Not sure I agree with the number of IDK either as the heavier user you are the more likely you will get suspended.
So the clock has started to see how quick LinkedIn Customer Service comes back to me, 12hrs so far.
Have to say I feel lost with out it and need to respond to some message I had in my inbox :-(
Thanks for getting back to us Simon…it sounds like a bizarre situation…and it doesn't seem to be the same situation that ATL has. Anyways, glad to hear things are back to normal for you.
They actually did reply a few hours after I posted my comment. They said there was a glitch which (the way I understood it) caused my account to go to the suspended mode after the password reset. They fixed the problem for me now. I am not sure if the glitch affects more than just my account.
Hi Simon,
I still haven't heard back from LinkedIn customer service and it has been 3 days. My account is still “suspended”, yet I am still getting emails stating that people have accepted my LinkedIn request and/or requests to connect. Not sure what is going on here! Please let me know if you get anywhere through calling them!
Thanks!
Simon, that is terrible! Very sorry to hear that…and bizarre that they would first ask you to reset your password only to suspend your account! Once again, please keep us in touch on how things go…I am hoping that Customer Service will respond more quickly than for my original subject of this blog post!
I am in the same situation. Only I first received an email from LinkedIn asking to reset the password, and only then I was told the account was suspended. No reply from Customer Service for two days. I will wait until after the weekend, then call them.
Thanks for the update…that is truly bizarre. Please do continue to keep us posted so that others can learn from your unfortunate experience. Good luck with everything….and I sincerely hope it ends up OK for you in the end.
Yes, Troy, based on the suspensions of LinkedIn accounts that people have been adding to their comments here, that would be very prudent!
Glad I read this: I've got 4k contacts, and was going to spend a day tagging all of them. Looks like I'll batch them into 25 at a time, over a number of months.
Here's an update on my account that had been suspended earlier in the day:
I sent an email to customer service, and received an email back fairly quickly saying that my password “had been disabled for security reasons” (no further explanation was given)and that I had to re-set it. I followed the instructions that were sent to me, re-set my password, and tried to sign in, only to receive the same message again that stated that my account has been suspended.
What is going on here???
Please do report back to us on what happens! I am starting to hear from a lot of people that their accounts are being suspended, so this may be something that LinkedIn has just started to do…let's hope it's the beginning of a quick end…
My accoutn was just suspended this morning! I recently began using LinkedIn more actively. I have had the account for approx 2 years, and would probably only view my page once per month. Within the past month, I have been utilizing it more (almost daily) as I have found it to be a valuable networking tool. However, today I am suspended and have no idea why! I have never even sent an invitation to anyone I don't know…my entire network is comprised of people I know personally, either through work or college/grad school! It will be itneresting to see how their customer service responnds to my questions. If I am falsely accused of anything, as the above blog discusses, I will be taking this issue further!!!!!!
Wow! LinkedIn is blocking people left and right! Apparently that must have been what did it…I would ping Customer Service…and also send them a tweet as well as post on their Facebook Wall. Good luck! And do let us know what happened!
I was just blocked this morning…frustrating. I did some clicking around on Friday afternoon since it was a bit slow at work. I guess that did it?
Hey Charles, yes, I have had the same experience. As I wrote in my LinkedIn book, consider LinkedIn invites a precious resource and never assume that LinkedIn will continue to grant you more and more!
Nice post! I haven’t been restricted on LinkedIn but have spoke with a few of the LinkedIn staff members about this. There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule about how many restrictions it takes before a person is permanently banned from inviting others. It appears (and this is assumption based on what was said and more importantly the dance around what wasn’t said) but it appears that a great deal depends on how quickly one gets restricted after having a previous restriction lifted, as well as how many restrictions they get. -Charles
Hey Rick, you are a funny guy! Nope, there has been no official word from LinkedIn, but they don't usually comment on these things. They have their own ways of doing things…although I really think they could benefit by doing some good old outreach to its users and explaining their side of the story. I am sure there are good reasons they have for doing what they do … unfortunately, from the average user perspective, they are difficult to comprehend.
Thanks for the info… but now you have me sitting on the edge of my seat after each click of the mouse!
This reminds me of an old advertisement for Tootsie Roll Pops… “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?”
Has there been any response from LinkedIn?
Yes, Dana, I agree 100% with you! Not only is the security concept a little ridiculous, but to accuse the innocent of crimes is, shall I say, unfriendly?
Wow, I had no idea about that – thanks for the heads up. Personally, I do a lot of business and networking on LinkedIN, so I can't imagine having my account suspended for a couple of days. The whole concept of how they run their security concept is a little ridiculous.
It IS bizarre, isn't it?
It seems like a contradiction in objectives. We're incouraged to connect with more people (more is better) because we can access more resources and skills and connect others to them as well. At the same time we seem to be penalized for doing just that.
Oh yes, running out of invitations and the IDK issue are “old school” restrictions…what I blogged about are relatively new…and alarming!
How do I email them? I see none of my posts, my notification stopped. This happened before snd they reset it. I had like one upset person out of 900. She said she would do this.. Sucks
They actually have many ways to be contacted. Please visit below for your options – and good luck!
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin?trk=oz-winner&lang=en
I was never suspended but I did run out of invitations and had to email customer services and beg for more. It takes a week or two but you get the new invites in the end.
Good point Jason! LinkedIn – “The Anti-Social Networking Site” just doesn't sound right, does it? ;-)
There's nothing sociable about LI's actions?! I thought we are encouraged to be sociable?
It does sound like things are getting out of hand at LinkedIn, doesn't it? ;-)
Here is what bothers me, I admit to breaking several rules, I am the one who skims rules and then just kinda catches on as i go. bad lesson. So two times fairly inocent I just had to say I would only ask people I know, which is a joke. But I did stop. Eventually someone reported me for having 5000 connections, saying no one could get that many in five months? Well suddenly i have two fake Pam accounts im restricted again #3 then i have to provide ID. I was so scared of the stalker,(i knew it involved my dads FBI case i testified in against a scammer of dads (dad is 73) I closed the account opened under first name first initial different picture, hoping to hide a bit. well this same woman reports me again. My question to you is, how can you report someone publically on linked in as a fake ? Is that not defamation of character? I was working my way back up to five thousand. My poor dad was so upset i lost all those connections. Now they blatantly put my name up all the time. on public forum. I have been proven innocent. I am staying off to let my heart have some peace. But today I saw them now itw two putting up fakes. is that legal?
You know I was fired from two non profits for not protecting the good name
i have never felt so much like a failure and this woman is really just a self named police for linked in.
any advice is appreciated
I am sorry to hear about your experiences Pam. You DO have the ability to report profiles on LinkedIn, and there are many ways of contacting LinkedIn Customer Service. I do hope they respond back to you.
You cannot contact customer service. There is no way to get ahold of anyone at LinkedIn without physically walking in the damn door
You're very welcome Alice! Stay safe!!!
Restricted based on the number of people who viewed your profile also? Now I have heard everything – like you have any control over that! It should be *good* if a lot of people are viewing your profile. Do you think Barack Obama gets his profile suspended for having too many people look at it? Ridiculous!
Thanks Neal for the heads up!
My account was restricted also. I have emailed LinkedIn three times with NO response from them. I have been very careful about everything and have NOT violated their terms of agreement. So I do not understand why they have not responded to my emails! IMO it is VERY Rude on their part and unprofessional! I used it very infrequently so I just quite sending emails after the third one. The only reason that I joined was because they spammed me with email until I finally joined. It still is hurtful that they can restrict my account and not even have the decency to respond to my emails! And of course all of my friend and fans in there think I am snubbing them…& I can’t even get in there!
I am sorry to hear about your experience Teddi, but hopefully, in addition to email, you can try to contact them on Twitter, etc. Do let us know how it goes!
Dear my accounts(2) have been locked just fo the reason to add people
This website is not affiliated in any way with LinkedIn. Please contact LinkedIn Customer Service directly. Thank you.
we at sextoyshopit have had our acount restricted two times now and before any one jumps to conclusions no ofending images no spamming just sayiny adult products for adult people and the link ,basically we are fed up of Linkedin they can keep us restricted there loss as we spend loads on advertising i have just emailed there customer suport and wrote please keep us restricted becouse we are fed up of your unfair system i mean there not the bee all ends all .
I hope you are able to resolve your situation peacefully Gary!
my account is resrticted can u please activate it
it’s my personal account
No I cannot activate it because I am a blogger and me, nor this site, is any way, shape, or form affiliated in any way with LinkedIn. The only people that can help you are LinkedIn Customer Support so please go to http://linkedin.com and ask them directly for help. Thank you!