LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 800 million members worldwide. While most users find great value in maintaining a LinkedIn profile for networking and career opportunities, some may wish to close or deactivate their accounts at times. However, LinkedIn does not make it easy for users to permanently delete their accounts. Here are some key reasons why LinkedIn does not allow users to easily close accounts.
1. LinkedIn wants to maintain its large user base
LinkedIn promotes itself as the world’s largest professional network, with a vast community of over 800 million members. A huge user base gives LinkedIn enormous value in terms of data collection, targeted advertising, premium subscriptions, and perceived authority in the professional networking space. If closing accounts was straightforward, many users would likely do so when changing jobs or taking career breaks, shrinking LinkedIn’s prized user base.
2. Closed accounts reduce LinkedIn’s data collection
A defining feature of LinkedIn is the vast amount of professional and employment data it can collect on its users. This allows highly targeted marketing, generates insights for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, and trains the site’s algorithm. If users could easily close their accounts, LinkedIn would lose access to their valuable data.
3. Account closures impact user engagement
LinkedIn relies heavily on user engagement for things like ad revenue, premium subscriptions, and overall traffic. If users could seamlessly close their accounts, overall activity and time spent on the platform would likely drop significantly. Reduced engagement could diminish LinkedIn’s attractiveness to advertisers and premium subscribers.
4. Closed accounts cannot subscribe to premium services
LinkedIn Premium is a major revenue source, providing paid subscriptions that offer enhanced services like advanced profile searches, unlimited inbox messages, and expanded network visibility. Users cannot subscribe to premium services if they close their account. By restricting account closures, LinkedIn sustains its revenue from premium subscribers.
5. Account deletion removes users from the talent pool
LinkedIn Recruiter and other talent solutions rely on a vast pool of talent within the LinkedIn ecosystem. If users could easily delete their accounts, many high-quality professionals would be removed from LinkedIn’s talent pool that recruiters pay to access. This would degrade the value proposition of LinkedIn’s talent solutions.
6. Compliance requirements may dictate account retention
As a large company handling tons of user data, LinkedIn must comply with various data management laws and policies. Some regulations may require LinkedIn to retain user account data for certain periods of time after closure for auditing or compliance purposes. This could preclude immediate and irreversible account deletion.
7. Immediate account removal creates a poor user experience
From a user experience perspective, the ability to instantly and permanently delete a long-standing professional profile could be problematic. Users may change their minds shortly after closure and expect account recovery. An immediate, irreversible deletion creates a poor experience if the user has second thoughts.
8. Closed accounts cannot be reactivated
If accounts could be instantly deleted, any user who later wanted to reopen their account would have to start from scratch. They would lose their network connections, job history, posts, and other profile details that took time to build up. Not allowing quick account deletion avoids this bad experience if the user wants to reactivate their profile.
9. Account removal eliminates cross-selling opportunities
When a user closes their account, LinkedIn loses the ability to market and sell other services to them, such as premium subscriptions, talent solutions, and educational products. By restricting account closures, LinkedIn sustains cross-selling opportunities after a user becomes inactive for a period.
10. Closed accounts cannot be leveraged for lead generation
Even inactive accounts represent sales leads to LinkedIn. Users who have closed their accounts cannot be targeted with customized offers to potentially re-engage them as active, paying members. Account closure permanently removes leads from LinkedIn’s pool.
Is it possible to delete a LinkedIn account?
While LinkedIn does not allow users to instantly and permanently delete their account, it is possible to cancel and close a LinkedIn account by following these steps:
- Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage and select Settings & Privacy.
- Under the Account preferences section, select Closing your LinkedIn account.
- Select Close your account under Permanently close your account.
- Enter your account password and click Continue.
- On the next page, select Close account.
After completing these steps, your account will be closed but not instantly deleted. LinkedIn states closed accounts are purged from their systems after 30 days. Some user data may remain in backups or aggregated LinkedIn data for up to 90 days after closure.
What happens when you close a LinkedIn account?
Here’s an overview of key things that happen when you close a LinkedIn account:
- Your profile, data, and account are inaccessible to you and others on LinkedIn.
- You cannot sign back into your account, but it still exists in LinkedIn’s systems.
- Your profile and data are removed from LinkedIn after approximately 30 days.
- Connections will no longer see you in their network.
- You stop receiving emails and notifications from LinkedIn.
- Groups you joined will show you as no longer a member.
- You lose access to job seeking tools and premium features.
So in summary, closing an account removes your presence from LinkedIn after 30 days, but the process is not instant or irreversible during the first month after closure.
Alternatives to closing your LinkedIn account
Instead of fully closing your LinkedIn account, you may want to consider these alternatives:
- Deactivate account – This temporarily hides your profile and removes you from search results. Your data remains intact for easy reactivation later.
- Delete app – Removing the mobile app from your device reduces notifications while maintaining your account.
- Adjust notifications – Disable email and push notifications in Settings & Privacy to reduce LinkedIn clutter.
- Revamp profile – You can change jobs, education, photo and other details to become less searchable and identifiable.
These options allow you to stay less visible on LinkedIn without permanently closing your account and losing connections and data.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn intentionally makes account closure difficult to discourage users from deleting their presence. Account removal harms several critical areas for LinkedIn including user base size, data collection, engagement, and premium subscriptions. While users can close accounts through a multi-step process, deletion is not instant and some data remains for 30-90 days. Alternatives like deactivating or limiting notifications allow reducing LinkedIn presence without permanent closure. Understanding LinkedIn’s retention policies provides clarity on options to manage your professional profile.