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Comment by tarek_computer | Hacker News Reader

I hear you. I just got officially banned permanently yesterday. I do not use their app except the web. Last month I was kicked off because they claimed that I am using an automation tool, which I don’t. The second time they kicked me out, they asked me to confirm that I do not use an automation all. I said I don’t. Yesterday, I got kicked out and was told to upload a government id such as a driving license. Shortly after, I got a message “ 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.”

I am not able to talk or ask anyone at LinkedIn why I have been banned. Is it because I don’t use their app? I don’t know.

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Are you using Chrome? Do you have any extensions?

Nothing. I only use safari to access LinkedIn via iOS and Mac OS.

Right? Dude, please provide some additional context around your web browser stack because something you’re using is triggering their system. That or you’re click house neighbours are using your wifi.

I have private relay enabled via iOS iCloud. I have no extensions installed. Preload top hit is enabled on safari by default. (Not sure if this is could be a factor). I only use safari across my devices. 2FA is enabled for LinkedIn and save password. That is it. I access LinkedIn frequently throughout the day.

> I have private relay enabled via iOS iCloud

I can see that might be it - because it means LinkedIn would be seeing you logging-in from different IP addresses in different geolocations every time (though Apple doesn't let you virtually change-country, I understand in the US it does make it look like you've moved-state).

Good point. I checked my private relay settings in iOS iCloud. It is set as “maintain general location” along with a description “ Maintain your general location to receive localized content, or enhance your privacy by using a broader IP address based on your country and time zone. Safari Private Browsing always uses an IP location from your country and time zone.”

I also use iCloud Private Relay and LinkedIn seems happy in my case. There has to be more to it and I wish they’d make these kinds of guards more transparent. You can’t just ban people because some crappy algo thinks you’re a bot.

Thank you. I recently dropped my full time job to start a consulting job. I needed LinkedIn for the crucial networking during my early stages. Now I am completely banned without knowing why

Why do you assume LinkedIn is correct? I've seen multiple social networks pull the scam where they claim you've violated their ToS only to demand your phone number and other personal information for "verification", and then after they've slurped your data, they don't seem to care about the so-called "violations" anymore.

Twitter pulled that stunt on me: within minutes after creating an account, having done precisely nothing with it yet, they locked me out with some vague complaint about security and suspicious behavior, demanding a phone number. I refused to comply, and several weeks of daily complaints to customer support eventually got the account unlocked, with no explanation; they are clearly just harvesting numbers for the sake of it.

Good point - hijacked Chrome extensions are a huge, huge security risk, especially because auto-update is on by-default. It's entirely possible every time you login to LinkedIn some dodgy code in your browser is harvesting your cookies to pass to some bots who then scrape LinkedIn.

Auto-updating extensions, and software in general, is a huge risk that people still seem unconcerned about: popular extension authors get approached by scummy ads/data/"analytics" companies all the time to inject spyware or adware into their software (even me: I have a couple of Chrome extensions with only about 20k regular users and I get an email to Chrome Developer Dashboard address every couple of months, asking me to add a small bit of JS which in-turn loads in other arbitrary JS which could be doing anything to my users' browsers - I'm proud to say that I reply to each and every of those e-mails with feigned interest, as the only morally correct course of action here is to waste their time.

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