My LinkedIn account was restricted. What do I do now?
Stop all outbound immediately, work out which rung of the ladder you are on, and do not appeal with a template. Most restrictions are invitation level and clear on their own once you stop feeding the signal. Identity checks need the real document. Then fix the targeting that caused it.
First, stop sending
Halt every queued invitation and message, on every tool touching the account. A sequence that is mid flight will keep producing the exact signal that caused the restriction, and a recovering account is scored harder than a healthy one.
Then do very little for a day. The instinct is to appeal immediately, log in repeatedly from new devices, or spin up a second account. All three make the picture worse. The fastest recoveries look like ordinary quiet usage of an account that belongs to a person.
Check every surface, not just the obvious one. A paused sequence in one tool does not stop a browser extension still running in a tab, or a second workspace a colleague set up against the same seat. Restrictions land on the account, so everything touching it has to go quiet at once.
Work out which rung you are on
The stages are distinct and the responses differ. A warning removes no capability. An invitation restriction stops new invitations while messages, search and the feed keep working, and it is by far the most common outcome. A temporary account restriction locks everything, usually with an identity check attached. Permanent closure sits at the end of the ladder and is rare as a first event.
Read the notice itself rather than the forum thread about it. The wording tells you which capability is gone and whether a verification step is being offered, and those two facts decide everything you do next.
Check too whether what happened was enforcement at all. Accounts land in a verification flow after a new device or a new country, which looks alarming and is ordinary. The response there is to verify and carry on, not to start a recovery plan you do not need.
What to do at each rung
Warning: this is the cheapest feedback available. Cut volume, audit the last two weeks of sends, and find the list with the worst acceptance rate. Do not resume at the old pace on the same list.
Invitation restriction: stop inviting, and also withdraw the stale pending invitations sitting unanswered, because they are part of the same picture. Withdrawing is not free: LinkedIn asks you to wait up to three weeks before re-inviting anyone whose invitation you withdrew. Keep using the account normally for reading and replies.
Temporary restriction with an identity check: complete it with a real government document that matches the name on the profile. A mismatch here is what turns a temporary restriction into a permanent one. Where no verification path is offered, the appeal form is the only lever.
Writing the appeal
Short, specific, in your own words. Say what the account is for, what you were doing with it, and what you have changed. If you were running a tool, do not lie about it. State what you stopped and what limits you are now running at.
What does not work: a copied template, a legal threat, five submissions of the same text, or an argument about how the enforcement system ought to behave. Reviewers process volume, and a form letter reads as exactly what it is.
Send it once and wait. Repeat submissions do not escalate a case and they do add noise to it. If a reply arrives asking for identity verification, that is progress rather than a fresh problem: it means the review is active and there is a defined path out of it.
Coming back without repeating it
When the restriction clears, the account is not back where it was. Treat it as a new seat: a fresh ramp, caps lower than you think you need, and a list you would be comfortable defending line by line. Our ramp multiplies the caps by 0.5x in week 0 and 0.75x in week 1 before reaching full rate in week 2, and a recovered seat deserves at least that.
Change the cause, not just the pace. If acceptance was in the teens, slower sending on the same list buys time and nothing else. Two of our own audiences accepted at 32% and 2.6% with comparable copy, which is what the real fix looks like: a different list, not a different schedule.
Restart with the warmest people first. The safest possible resumption is a slice of the list where acceptance is close to certain, because it rebuilds the ratio before the seat touches anything risky. Cold names can wait a fortnight. The account cannot afford a second bad one.
What tooling can and cannot do here
Caps enforced server side rather than typed into a settings field mean a recovering seat cannot be pushed past its ramp by an impatient instruction. Suppression memory stops a recovered account from touching the people who ignored it the first time. An approval gate keeps the first weeks back under human eyes, one message at a time.
What no tool can do is appeal for you, speed up a review, or restore a closed account. Any vendor implying otherwise is selling a process it does not control. The honest version is that tooling reduces the chance of a second restriction and does nothing about the current one.
It helps to separate the seat from the workspace. Plans cover up to three accounts on Operator and ten on Agency, so a restricted seat can sit out its recovery while the others keep working, provided you resist moving its volume target onto them.
Restriction types and the first move for each
| Notice | What still works | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Warning | Everything | Cut volume, audit the last two weeks |
| Invitation restriction | Messages, feed, search | Stop inviting, withdraw stale pending invitations |
| Temporary account restriction | Nothing until cleared | Complete the identity check with a real document |
| Permanent closure | Nothing | Appeal once, in your own words |
Questions people ask next
How long does a LinkedIn restriction last?
An invitation restriction commonly clears in days to a few weeks. A temporary account restriction usually needs identity verification plus a waiting period. Permanent closures require an appeal with a narrow success path. LinkedIn publishes no timetable for any of them.
Should I create a new account while I wait?
No. A second seat run at the pace that triggered the first restriction reproduces the pattern with none of the history that was buying headroom, and the two accounts are easy to associate.
Does withdrawing pending invitations help?
It removes a live signal, which is worth doing, with one cost: LinkedIn asks you to wait up to three weeks before re-inviting anyone whose invitation you withdrew. Withdraw the stale ones, not the recent ones you still expect to land.
Will verifying my identity get the account back?
It is the fastest path when it is offered, provided the document matches the profile name. It does nothing for a restriction that was not asking for verification.
Why this page exists: Safety cluster in the answers plan: account restriction and recovery queries
LinkedBoost is the LinkedIn MCP server: your agent sources, drafts, sends and works the inbox, inside caps the server enforces rather than suggests.
Related answers
Almost nobody is banned for using a tool. Accounts get restricted for a pattern: volume on a young account, mechanical timing, identical copy at scale, falling acceptance that nobody slowed down for, and "I don't know this person" reports. Enforcement arrives as a ladder, and the first rung is survivable.
LinkedIn publishes no invitation limit at all. Not daily, and not the 100 a week the whole category quotes. Its help pages describe restriction triggers in words and give recovery durations, never a number. So every figure you have read, including ours, is somebody's policy. Ours is 20 a day and 80 a week on a new seat, ramped and enforced.