Prohibited software and extensions

Last updated: 6 months ago

LinkedIn is committed to keeping its members' data safe and its website free from fraud and abuse. In order 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 scrape, modify the appearance of, or automate activity on LinkedIn's website. We also don’t permit the use of fake accounts or fake engagement on LinkedIn’s website, including any tools or services that try to manipulate LinkedIn’s content algorithms. All of these tools violate the User Agreement, including, but not limited to, the following prohibitions listed in Section 8.2: 

  • Develop, support or use software, devices, scripts, robots or any other means or processes (such as crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) 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, create, comment on, like, share, or re-share posts, or otherwise drive inauthentic engagement;
  • Overlay or otherwise modify the Services or their appearance (such as by inserting elements into the Services or removing, covering, or obscuring an advertisement included on the Services); 
  • Copy, use, display or distribute any information (including content) obtained from the Services, whether directly or through third parties (such as search tools or data aggregators or brokers), without the consent of the content owner (such as LinkedIn for content it owns);
  • Override any security feature or bypass or circumvent any access controls or use limits of the Services (such as search results, profiles, or videos);
  • Deep-link to our Services for any purpose other than to promote your profile or a Group on our Services, without LinkedIn’s consent. 
  • Interfere with the operation of, or place an unreasonable load on, the Services (e.g., spam, denial of service attack, viruses, gaming algorithms).

Any member who uses tools for such purposes is in violation of the User Agreement. This means that they risk having their accounts restricted or shut down. They also risk the possibility that any prohibited tools they’re using may become non-operational without notice. In order to maintain LinkedIn as a safe and trusted platform to facilitate authentic interactions between professionals and to keep our members' data safe, we're constantly working to improve our technical measures and defenses against the operation of scraping, automation, and other tools that abuse LinkedIn's platform.