Why LinkedIn accounts get restricted or blocked

This article explains the most common reasons LinkedIn blocks or restricts accounts and provides recommendations to follow if it happens to you.

Common reasons why LinkedIn blocks accounts

Steps if your account got a warning

Steps if your account gets restricted

Tips to avoid suspicious activity

LinkedIn sets daily and weekly limits (officially unknown) on actions like viewing or following profiles, sending connection requests and messages. Exceeding limits or showing a sudden increase in activity can be suspicious to LinkedIn’s systems.

In some cases, this leads to temporary account restrictions or bans.

Common reasons why LinkedIn accounts get blocked

Let’s look at why your LinkedIn can be blocked or restricted, so you can avoid risky behaviors.

Reason 1: LinkedIn automation and manual actions at the same time

If you have an active campaign while also manually connecting with leads using the same account, LinkedIn may detect it as suspicious activity. Since Snov.io automation simulates real actions and counts toward your daily limits, combining it with manual outreach can push your account over LinkedIn’s limits.

Recommendation: At times when your LinkedIn campaign is active, limit manual activity in your profile or don’t do it all.

Reason 2: Using a free LinkedIn account for outreach

A free LinkedIn account is meant for personal use, not for running outreach campaigns or sending hundreds of connection requests. If you try to use it that way, you might run into restrictions.

A premium account offers higher, more flexible limits, making it less likely to get restrictions or be blocked compared to a free account.

Recommendation: Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium. If you're unsure whether it's worth it or which LinkedIn plan to choose, our blog article explains the different types of premium accounts and their features.

Reason 3: Low account SSI score

A low SSI score and doing too many actions in a short time may lead to your account restriction.

To avoid getting blocked, your account needs to develop a good reputation on LinkedIn. One key metric for this is the SSI score (Social Selling Index), which measures how active your profile is and its rating.

The threshold for restrictions can directly depend on your SSI score, account age, and activity history. Accounts with low scores are more likely to be restricted.

Recommendation: Grow your SSI score. A high SSI score (above 40-50) proves to LinkedIn that your activity is real and meaningful and that you don’t deserve a ban.

To increase your SSI score, it helps to post original content on relevant topics regularly. This brings engagement (likes and comments from other users), which increases your reputation. Your score also improves with a high-quality network and a fully completed profile.

You can monitor your SSI score directly in your LinkedIn account settings in Snov.io. 

Reason 4: Extensive LinkedIn browsing

This relates to the previous reason as well, but even when you're not using automation, performing many manual actions can lead to restrictions (especially on free LinkedIn accounts).

There is a limit for every activity on LinkedIn, and even simple actions like visiting or following a high number of pages on LinkedIn can trigger suspicion.

Even if your intentions are genuine, your account may receive a warning or even a restriction if it's seen as too active based on LinkedIn's standards.

Recommendation: LinkedIn's limits are not publicly disclosed, so use common sense. Don’t do actions in patterns that may seem robotic or spammy, such as rapidly interacting with profiles from search results one by one.

Reason 5: Too many connection requests or messages

This reason is also related to exceeding the limit on actions, but requires a lot more attention. Connection requests and LinkedIn messages have the strictest limits and it is very easy to get a restriction for doing too many of them.

There’s even a special page in LinkedIn’s help center that says that sending too many requests in a short period might cause a restriction.

Recommendations:

1) Consider total action limits: automated + manual

 If you often send connection requests and messages on LinkedIn yourself, lower the daily automation limits in your LinkedIn account settings. Or the other way around, don’t send them manually when your automation is in progress.

2) Manage pending requests: Having too many requests that are still pending (neither accepted nor rejected) can negatively affect your account’s rating—it suggests you’re sending requests to people who aren’t interested.

Monitor the number of pending requests. You can manage them manually in your account or let Snov.io take care of it. Enable automatic mode, and we’ll keep them within the recommended limit for you. Go to the Connection requests page to set this up.

3) Use InMail as an alternative: A safe limit for connection requests and messages is about 20-30 per day. If you know you’re already above this limit, consider using InMail to reach more leads. InMail has fixed limits based on your LinkedIn account quotas, so you’ll know exactly how many you can send.

Automation sequences in Snov.io can also include the InMail action.

Reason 6: Low acceptance rate and response rate

If too many recipients ignore or mark your connection requests as "I don't know this person," it will decrease your SSI score and may indirectly lead to an account restriction.

Don’t send more than 20–30 connection requests per day if your acceptance rate is below 40%.

Recommendations:

1) Personalize your connection request message. You can add dynamic content and variables to actions in the LinkedIn sequence editor.

2) Monitor LinkedIn statistics: When your LinkedIn actions have high engagement, the risk of restrictions is lower, as LinkedIn sees your actions as well-targeted. Check your LinkedIn statistics on the Reports dashboard.

Reason 7: Using more than one automation tool

It’s the most obvious one, but we still have to mention it. Never use the same LinkedIn account for more than one automation campaign simultaneously. This will double its overall activity, even if you set safe limits on each platform.

What’s even more dangerous is that there could be an overlap in campaign schedules, which means two automations running at the same time, which will result in a ban with almost 100% certainty.

Recommendation: We cannot recommend any tool other than Snov.io. Using any automation tool is risky, but Snov.io takes your LinkedIn account security seriously. Here’s how.

What to do if your LinkedIn account got a warning

LinkedIn may warn you that suspicious activity has been detected on your profile.

This warning doesn’t necessarily mean LinkedIn has detected that you are using Snov.io for automation; your account uses a dedicated location-based proxy to keep it undetected. 

This type of warning is most often triggered by exceeding limits or a sudden increase in activity.

You may receive this type of notification from LinkedIn when you sign in to your account. Read the message to find out more details.

Step 1: Lower daily action limits

If you receive this message, lower the volume of daily actions performed in your automation. You can keep up your outreach volume through email automation during this time.

To adjust your daily limits, go to your LinkedIn account settings and find the Safety limits.

Make sure your limits are set to recommended values based on your SSI score. Don’t increase the limits until your score improves.

Step 2. Warm up the account

Use a warm-up approach as a rule — increase your action limits gradually and only after your account’s reputation improves.

After lowering the limits, gradually increase them (by +1–2 points for each action every week). 

During the warm-up period, monitor your SSI score — if it increases, then it's safe to increase the activity. This way, you’ll be able to safely return to your normal volumes without triggering suspicious activity warnings.

The same applies to your manual outreach on LinkedIn during this time — keep them lower than usual. Instead, focus on activities (posting content, commenting) that increase your SSI score.

What to do if your LinkedIn account was restricted or blocked

If LinkedIn still thinks your account has exceeded the activity limits or their frequency, it may put your account under restriction or block it. They are often temporary and are removed after a few days.

Your account is always in safe limits mode during automation. This means it will only perform a set number of actions and pause activity until the next day. The actions are distributed throughout the day with human-like intervals, rather than executed one by one.

If you still get blocked while using the automation, see the reasons why it could happen in the first part of this article.

While your LinkedIn account isn’t available, use email automation to keep your outreach active through the other channel. In our Finder tools, you get prospects with contact information for both channels: a verified email address and a LinkedIn URL.

By following these steps after a block, you can safely get back to running LinkedIn campaigns.

Step 1. Use LinkedIn rotation

If your LinkedIn account gets blocked, pause all active automations using that account or switch to another LinkedIn sender.

If no active LinkedIn account is available, the sequence will be paused. To avoid interruptions, you can add backup LinkedIn profiles to the rotation within the same campaign.

How to add LinkedIn rotation to your sequence.

Step 2: Reconnect LinkedIn account

When the restriction ends, sign in to your LinkedIn profile and check the connection status in your LinkedIn account settings.

If you see an error, reconnect it: Click the Edit icon to open the settings and find the Reconnect option. Follow the on-screen instructions to verify the connection.

Step 3. Resume automation with low limits

For the first few days after resuming the automation, lower the number of LinkedIn actions performed daily in your automation sequences.

To do this, go to the LinkedIn account settings and find the Safety limits.

Make sure your limits are set to recommended values based on your SSI score. Don’t increase the limits until your score improves.

It’s best to start over with low limits (10–20 actions per day). Keep these limits for a week, then gradually increase them using a warm-up approach.

Step 4. Warm up account

Use a warm-up approach as a rule — increase your action limits gradually and only after your account’s reputation (SSI score) improves.

After lowering the limits, gradually increase them (by +1–2 points for each action every week). 

During this time, monitor your SSI score in the account — if it increases, then it's safe to increase the activity. This way, you’ll be able to safely return to your normal volumes without triggering suspicious activity.

The same applies to your manual outreach on LinkedIn during this time — keep them lower than usual. Instead, focus on activities (posting content, commenting) that increase your SSI score.

Tips to avoid suspicious activity on LinkedIn

• Pay attention to the warnings from LinkedIn. When you see a warning, lower your daily action limits for a few days.
• Increase your SSI score and reputation. A strong profile lowers the chances of getting another restriction.
• Don’t create new LinkedIn accounts for automation purposes. This is a direct path to getting blocked.
• Use a warm-up approach as your strategy to recover from restrictions and gradually grow your volume rather than making sudden spikes in activity.

With these tips in mind, you can continue your LinkedIn outreach while staying compliant with LinkedIn’s rules.

If you feel that this article doesn't help with your issue, don't hesitate to reach out to our Customer Care team at help@snov.io or via live support chat.