It seems that LinkedIn has intensified its enforcement efforts towards firms. Most not too long ago, Seamless.AI and Apollo.io grew to become the newest casualties, probably for violating LinkedIn’s information safety insurance policies. Is LinkedIn being too inflexible? Or is that this a bigger play for information?
Why LinkedIn eliminated Seamless.AI and Apollo.io pages
Earlier right this moment, LinkedIn customers observed that the official LinkedIn pages for Seamless.AI and Apollo.io had allegedly disappeared with out warning. Conversations in Reddit threads and LinkedIn posts from professionals like Clark Barron and Benyamin Holley counsel that the removals had been purportedly on account of suspected violations of LinkedIn’s strict insurance policies on scraping and automation.
Each firms are identified for providing lead era instruments, together with Chrome extensions designed to assist gross sales professionals automate outreach and prospecting. Whereas these instruments simplify the method, their performance might intersect with LinkedIn’s insurance policies on information extraction, which prohibit unauthorized entry to consumer info.
In accordance with a LinkedIn publish by Benyamin Holley, sources confirmed that LinkedIn completely eliminated the LinkedIn pages of Seamless.AI on account of direct violations of the platform’s insurance policies. Whereas Apollo.io has not issued an announcement, its web page’s disappearance suggests the same enforcement motion was taken.
LinkedIn’s clear stance on information scraping and automation
LinkedIn has lengthy maintained a strict stance towards unauthorized information extraction, however current actions point out a stronger dedication to enforcement.
In accordance with LinkedIn’s official assist documentation, the platform doesn’t allow the usage of any third-party software program that engages in:
- Scraping consumer profiles, connections, or some other platform information
- Automating exercise, together with sending messages, including contacts, or partaking with content material
- Modifying LinkedIn’s interface, similar to hiding advertisements or altering the structure
- Driving faux engagement, similar to artificially boosting likes, shares, or feedback
- Bypassing LinkedIn’s safety measures or search limits
LinkedIn explicitly bans crawlers, bots, browser plug-ins, and extensions that extract or automate any type of interplay on its platform. The corporate additionally prohibits utilizing faux accounts, algorithm manipulation, and safety circumvention, all of which may result in account bans, instrument shutdowns, or authorized penalties.
“Any member who makes use of instruments for such functions is in violation of the Person Settlement. Which means they threat having their accounts restricted or shut down.”
LinkedIn’s Belief & Security Staff
LinkedIn Assist
AI-powered enforcement: How LinkedIn detects violations
LinkedIn isn’t simply counting on guide enforcement. It has constructed superior AI-powered programs to detect and forestall abusive habits patterns routinely.
A current LinkedIn Engineering weblog publish highlights how the corporate has developed deep studying fashions that analyze member exercise sequences to flag suspicious behaviors. These AI-driven enforcement instruments assess:
- The frequency and scale of information requests (to detect scraping makes an attempt)
- Irregular interplay patterns (to determine bot-like habits)
- Uncommon API exercise (to catch unauthorized automation)
By leveraging AI and behavioral analytics, LinkedIn can proactively determine and prohibit instruments that violate its insurance policies, even earlier than they achieve widespread use.
A historical past of authorized battles towards scraping
The enforcement actions towards Seamless.AI and Apollo.io align with LinkedIn’s broader authorized technique to fight unauthorized information scraping.
The hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn Case
In a landmark case, LinkedIn sued hiQ Labs for scraping publicly obtainable LinkedIn profiles. The Ninth Circuit initially dominated that scraping public information doesn’t violate the Laptop Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), however LinkedIn has continued to push again by means of authorized appeals.
The 2022 Mantheos Lawsuit
LinkedIn efficiently shut down Singapore-based firm Mantheos Ptd. Ltd, which was discovered to be scraping LinkedIn’s member profile information. As a part of the authorized settlement, Mantheos agreed to completely delete all scraped information, stop scraping actions, and destroy its software program.
These instances underscore LinkedIn’s aggressive authorized stance towards unauthorized information entry. Given this historical past of authorized actions, different firms partaking in related information extraction practices could also be at excessive threat of enforcement.
The affect on gross sales intelligence platforms
The elimination of Seamless.AI and Apollo.io’s LinkedIn pages is a transparent warning to different gross sales tech firms that rely closely on LinkedIn information. The questions now are:
- Will LinkedIn take additional motion towards different lead era platforms?
- Are different instruments like Lusha, ZoomInfo, and Cognism in danger?
- How can firms adapt to LinkedIn’s growing enforcement?
For now, companies and gross sales professionals that rely on LinkedIn-integrated instruments ought to reassess their information practices. Given LinkedIn’s means to automate coverage enforcement utilizing AI and its historical past of authorized motion, this crackdown may very well be the beginning of a wider purge of unauthorized information scraping instruments.
An indication of stricter rules to come back?
The elimination of Seamless.AI and Apollo.io’s LinkedIn pages is greater than a one-off occasion. It indicators LinkedIn’s rising give attention to imposing information privateness and safety insurance policies.
With AI-powered detection mechanisms and stronger authorized precedent, LinkedIn sends a transparent message to firms and people that scraping or automating exercise on its platform won’t be tolerated.
This will start a serious shift for gross sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and lead era firms, the place compliance, transparency, and moral information utilization will grow to be important for survival.
Disclaimer: We’re protecting this subject based mostly solely on publicly obtainable discussions on LinkedIn and Reddit, and we do not have affirmation on the precise causes behind the elimination of those pages. We await additional developments on this challenge and can replace this publish as extra info turns into obtainable.