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What the post says
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What a ban means
In July 2026 LinkedIn removed Fatima Khan's account. 110,000 followers, more than 500 posts. The account only came back after the creator Charlie Hills publicly asked for help and hundreds of people filed support tickets.
Jasmin Alić is a brand coach, a LinkedIn Learning instructor and one of the best known LinkedIn coaches in the world, with more than 370,000 followers. Within one year his account was restricted five times. In January 2026 he wrote to LinkedIn: “You are putting people's livelihoods at risk.”
In September 2026 LinkedIn restricted a founder's account right after her appearance on “Die Höhle der Löwen”, the German Dragons' Den. In exactly the days when everyone wanted to get to know her. Her investor Johannes Kliesch is publicly looking for a contact at LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is not liable for this. Under its User Agreement, liability is capped at 1,000 US dollars. And LinkedIn says so itself: “LinkedIn is not a storage service.”
What the posts say, and what they don't
In the posts you read reasons such as identity verification, a suspicious login or too much traffic. That is how the people affected tell it. Nobody can verify it.
Anyone who uses a tool LinkedIn prohibits would be admitting a breach of the User Agreement. That puts at risk the very account they are fighting for. So hardly anyone says it in public.
In our assessment, the most common cause of bans is a tool like that. These tools have tens of thousands of users and make millions in revenue. Those users are on LinkedIn every day.
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Under each of these posts are hundreds of comments from people the same thing happened to.
What LinkedIn prohibits
“To protect our members' data and our website, we don't permit the use of any third party software, including crawlers, bots, browser plug-ins, or browser extensions, that scrapes, modifies the appearance of, or automates activity on LinkedIn's website.”
“Members who use such tools for these purposes are in violation of the User Agreement and risk having their LinkedIn account restricted or shut down.”
Three prohibitions from the User Agreement, section 8.2
Using software, scripts, robots, browser plugins and add-ons “to scrape or copy the Services, including profiles and other data from the Services”.
“Use bots or other unauthorized automated methods to access the Services, add or download contacts, send or redirect messages”.
“Use or attempt to use another's account (such as sharing log-in credentials or copying cookies)”.
Source: LinkedIn User Agreement
LinkedIn actively looks for them. The site checks your browser for more than 6,000 extensions. LinkedIn confirms it specifically looks for extensions that read data without consent.
Vendors LinkedIn has removed or sued
Even Lara Acosta, one of the best known creators on LinkedIn, is a co-founder of Kleo. Kleo was a Chrome extension for LinkedIn with more than 70,000 users. In June 2025 it had to be shut down. Co-founder Jake Ward: “LinkedIn told us to.” If even the best known names build tools LinkedIn prohibits, this is not a fringe phenomenon. It is the norm.
Source: post by Jake WardLinkedIn itself says that prohibited tools can stop working without prior notice. Anyone who built their sales on them is then left with nothing.
What this means for you
If you are banned and did nothing wrong, you can appeal. If you use a tool LinkedIn prohibits, you have breached the User Agreement. Then your entire sales channel hangs on a decision you have no influence over.
The SpotFan way
SpotFan reads your data through the channel LinkedIn itself built for it. You grant the permission in your LinkedIn account, where it is visible in your settings. SpotFan sends nothing, posts nothing and clicks nothing.
Sources
All cases linked to the original. As of 29 September 2026.