Recently, I discovered that I had been locked out of LinkedIn. No reason or warning given. Almost 12 years to the month since I opened an account on LinkedIn, 6,000 connections and countless articles, updates messages etc. were suddenly all gone.

Then I realised I could no longer get into apps or other websites that I had previously used LinkedIn for logins. Websites and emails that form part of my business that pointed to my LinkedIn profile were now rendered out of date. The profile was no longer there. My account had been moved to ‘High Restricted’ and to appeal it, I had to fill in a form where the first question was ‘Why you believe the account restriction is in error?’

I didn’t know; nobody had told me why they did it. Although I had set up my LinkedIn account in early 2004 and, over that time, had steadily amassed a good number of contacts, my primary use for the platform was for checking out people who I was about to meet or for ensuring I had the most up-to-date contact information. Limited effort had been put into ensuring my profile was all it could be.

One session with Chris Reed from Black Marketing, and the increasing functionality that LinkedIn was adding, was enough to convince me that I could be using the platform more effectively and, over the course of the last year, it has become my go-to platform for lead generation and staying in touch with my network.


Consequently, losing access to LinkedIn was actually proving to be a real nuisance. Not on the scale of losing access to my Google account, but certainly more than losing Facebook or Twitter. It was a healthy reminder of how reliant we can become on these platforms and how helpless we are in the event that an algorithm decides we have crossed some boundary or another (I'm pretty sure it was an algorithm and not Reid Hoffman being malicious).

Ultimately, with some chasing over Twitter, and a little bit of escalation (thank you Kat at LinkedIn), I had to send them a copy of my passport and my profile was re-instated. The automated email I received from LinkedIn suggested a range of offenses I might have committed. There was only one I was guilty of and that was letting my assistants log in as me to handle my messages. Although I had been doing this for over a year, clearly LinkedIn’s New Year’s resolution was to clamp down on it.

The problem is that I often receive upwards of 30 messages and requests each day. That might not seem like a lot, but it's definitely more then I have time to handle. I realise the restrictions are not put in place to make my life harder; I'm sure they are there to stop the myriad of spammers and other Internet nasties that plague any platform. It has, unfortunately, caused me to consider scaling back my use of LinkedIn, which would be a shame.

On the other hand, it did make me realise what a success LinkedIn has been. The site started in 2002 and has consistently added large numbers of users each year.

P.S. If you haven't already, extract all your contacts in case you accidentally get banned!