I posted earlier on HN that LinkedIn permanently banned me without knowing why. It’s a moot point with them because no person on LinkedIn seems willing (or aware) to talk to me and tell me why. All I get is the same automated response that I am banned: “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.”
Recruiters expect me to have a LinkedIn link on my resume or portfolio, and they expect job seekers like myself to be searchable on the platform as well. That is no longer an option for me. Besides replacing my LinkedIn URL with my home page on my resume, if that even matters, where do you think I can promote myself as a technology consultant now that I no longer exist on LinkedIn?
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
I would first search past emails and see if there were any suspicious activity on the account. It may be that your account was compromised and used in spamming.
Alternatively, you can create a throwaway account and with that search your old profile. See if you can spot anything suspicious.
Finally, you can create a new profile, but make sure not to use the same recovery email/phone as before, that way automated systems would not flag this new profile.
This is really worryinng, I was talking to a friend at the weekend and mentioned this exact scenario… As Linkedin is becomming a monopoly on being able to find work, they have you by the balls if you go against them in any way. Very dangerous to mix a job board with what is now a fully blown social media platform, one which srems to share the same policies as the likes of Youtube on how it bans its users!
If ever there were a case for forced interop this would be it.
Good luck
