I took CastaNet out for a spin before offering it to clients. I pulled in two Lead lists from my LinkedIn Sales Navigator and deployed the templated Networking campaign using their default throttles for views, requests, messages, et al.
In less than 24 hours, I first received a "Suspicious Activity" email from LinkedIn about log-ins and then LinkedIn subsequently suspended my account for violating their policy for automated activity.
I can't afford to be without LinkedIn for too long so I immediately removed my account credentials from Castanet while I contacted their support. Somehow, my account gets suspended by LinkedIn again, for much longer.
This would be a nightmare to deal with for clients. Definitely take Castanet for a spin yourself before selling it, and proceed with caution.
Hi Dan,
I appreciate you bringing this issue to light and I'm sorry to hear about he experience you had with LinkedIn. Since launching with Vendasta, this is the first instance like this we've had occur, so we'll definitely look into it further.
What we know is that compliance bots randomly spot check LinkedIn profiles and ask users to verify that they are REAL to help ensure quality control. This may occur when a profile is new or if its behaving unusually (out of character). Meaning, LinkedIn can pause your account to ensure you're a real person and not part of a bot farm who spun up a fake profile or had your profile compromised in some way. Once verified, you should be good to continue.
Please note that getting flagged for unusual behavior can occur regardless of whether or not you're using an automation tool or doing the same thing manually.
CASTANET only automates actions a user would normally do while prospecting. It assists your profile with the time consuming and repetitive actions, but always works to keep your activity within the parameters allowable by LinkedIn. That being said, it doesn't mean that LinkedIn won't take notice of your change in behavior and ask you to verify that you're real.
If you have any other concerns or if you'd like to share some additional details for us to learn from, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly at geoff@gocastanet.com.
I've had a great experience with CastaNet. My bet is that you had the throttles used for both campaigns... meaning you were probably inviting 50+ connection requests a day. Is that the case?
Here's a snapshot of the campaign I ran for my own lead gen
