Is scanning LinkedIn against the rules? What really happens, and how to stay safe
Plainly, automated scanning is against LinkedIn's User Agreement. Here's what the risk looks like in practice (warnings and temporary holds, not bans, in every case we've recorded), what to do after a warning, and how Sixgree paces itself.
3 min readBy Blake Burford
Yes: automated scanning is against LinkedIn's rules. LinkedIn's User Agreement says you may not use software or scripts to scrape or copy the site. Sixgree's scanner reads LinkedIn in a Chrome window signed into your own account, so using it is a choice you make about your own account, and we'd rather you make it knowing exactly what that means.
The good news is that the risk is gradual, visible and recoverable, and you control most of it.
What actually happens when LinkedIn pushes back
In every case we have on record, LinkedIn warned first and any restriction was temporary:
A warning during a run: an unusual-activity notice or a security check. Nothing is lost; it's LinkedIn asking you to slow down.
A temporary hold: on 9 September 2026 a test account that kept mapping circles for about an hour, after a warning had already appeared, was restricted with a day's notice and released the same evening. On 28 September another was held after 373 searches in 24 hours, run back to back with the daily limit raised far past the default.
We have no record of an account being permanently banned for using Sixgree. That's a record, not a promise: LinkedIn decides, and it doesn't publish its limits. Both holds came from pushing well past the defaults, and both came after a warning that was ignored.
How to keep the risk low
Stay on Medium or Slow. Fast is there for small, occasional rounds. Medium and Slow read like a person who's looking carefully.
Keep the default daily limit (50 searches a day). It leaves room under limits LinkedIn doesn't publish.
After a warning, stop for a day. Don't press Lift limits for this session and carry on: continuing straight after a warning is what turned a warning into a hold both times. Wait about 24 hours, then come back on Slow or Medium with a small round.
Map in rounds, not marathons. 5 to 10 circles at a time, spread over days, builds the same map with a fraction of the risk.
Leave full profile reads off unless you need past roles. A profile view is the action LinkedIn watches most closely.
No risk at all: import LinkedIn's own Connections.csv (here's how) or explore the invented sample.
What Sixgree does for you
Since those two holds, the scanner has been rebuilt around them:
Human pacing. Every wait is a little different, each page gets reading time for the people on it, the page is scrolled in uneven steps, and there are short breaks and longer rests, layered on top of the waits that already worked.
One daily limit, 50 by default, with profile views counted against it and never closer than a minute apart.
It stops at the first push-back. A sign-in wall, a security check, a restriction notice or a "too many requests" reply ends the scan at once and starts a cooldown. It never retries those.
Auto scan keeps office hours. Small sittings from 9:00 to 18:00 with long rests, and it never runs past your limit.
Everything is saved as it goes, so stopping never loses what was read.
The short version
Scanning is against LinkedIn's terms, and that's your call to make. If you do scan: stay on Medium or Slow, keep the default limit, and treat a warning as a day off, not a speed bump. In everything we've recorded, that's the difference between a map and a hold.
Download your LinkedIn connections as a CSV from LinkedIn's own settings, on Mac, Windows or iPhone, what the file contains and what it leaves out, and how to see the people in it as a map with tiers.
The full design history of Sixgree, with pictures: from Next.js's default favicon to a gold S that reads as a 6, every wordmark we drew, the name change, the tier palettes in each look, and the design rules behind them.
Use Sixgree to inspect possible bridges, then ask a mutual LinkedIn connection for an introduction with clear, respectful messages and a forwardable blurb.
