LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 722 million users worldwide as of April 2022. With such a massive user base, many LinkedIn users are interested in downloading their connections’ email addresses for marketing and outreach purposes.
Can You Download LinkedIn Connections’ Email Addresses Directly?
The short answer is no. LinkedIn does not allow users to directly download or export a list of their connections’ email addresses. This is to protect the privacy of LinkedIn members and prevent misuse of email lists.
When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you are not given access to their actual email address. You can only message them through LinkedIn’s messaging system. Their email is not visible to you at any point.
LinkedIn also does not provide any tools or settings to bulk download the email addresses of your connections. This feature simply does not exist within LinkedIn.
Why Doesn’t LinkedIn Allow Downloading Email Addresses?
LinkedIn has a few key reasons for not allowing users to download email addresses:
- Privacy protection – LinkedIn wants to protect the privacy of its members and not allow their personal emails to be downloaded without consent.
- Prevent spam & abuse – Downloaded email lists could be used to send unsolicited emails and messages.
- Security – Email lists could be stolen or accessed by bad actors and used maliciously.
- User agreement – LinkedIn’s user agreement explicitly prohibits scraping, exporting, or downloading data from their platform.
- Promote communication within LinkedIn – LinkedIn wants to encourage users to communicate within their ecosystem using LinkedIn messaging.
By restricting access to emails, LinkedIn maintains control over how its members communicate and interact on the platform. This allows them to better safeguard privacy and prevent misuse of their members’ information.
Are There Any Workarounds to Get LinkedIn Connections’ Emails?
Because LinkedIn intentionally restricts access to connection email addresses, there are no authorized workarounds within the LinkedIn platform itself. However, some users attempt unofficial, unsanctioned methods to try to obtain LinkedIn connections’ emails.
Here are some of the workarounds that people attempt, but that violate LinkedIn’s terms of service:
- Web scraping – Using bots or automation to scrape LinkedIn profile pages for any visible email addresses.
- Bulk searching Google/Bing – Taking a list of LinkedIn connections’ names and searching major search engines to uncover emails.
- Browser extensions – Installing browser extensions that claim to find emails on LinkedIn profiles.
- Copying publicly visible emails – Manually sifting through profiles and copying emails that some members list publicly.
However, it’s important to keep in mind these workarounds violate LinkedIn’s terms of service, which prohibit scraping data or exporting user information without consent. Violating the ToS can result in LinkedIn penalizing your account through warnings, temporary suspensions, or permanent bans.
What Are the Risks of Scraping LinkedIn Emails?
Beyond just violating LinkedIn’s ToS, there are also significant risks involved with scraping or obtaining LinkedIn email lists:
- Your LinkedIn account can be suspended or banned for violating the terms of service.
- Any messages sent could be flagged as spam, hurting your sending reputation.
- You risk damaging relationships with connections by emailing without consent.
- You may obtain outdated, incorrect email addresses, resulting in bounces.
- You could open yourself up to legal liability for accessing information without permission.
In most jurisdictions, even perceived “public” information requires consent before using it for commercial purposes. Overall, the risks involved make it an unwise decision to attempt to scrape LinkedIn for email addresses.
What Are Some Alternatives to Get Email Addresses?
Instead of scraping LinkedIn against their ToS, focus on legitimate alternatives to obtain professional email addresses:
- Enrich your existing contacts – Upload your current lead/customer lists totools like Clearbit Connect to enrich with social and contact information.
- Expand your network organically – Connect with prospects on LinkedIn and nurture relationships to eventually request contact information.
- Use visitor tracking – Track visitors to your website and capture their contact information with consent.
- Pay for verified lead lists – Purchase professional contact lists from reputable verified list providers.
- Attend events to network – Meet potential prospects in-person at industry conferences, trade shows, and meetups.
While not as fast and easy as scraping, using legitimate opt-in channels to obtain professional contacts ensures you stay on the right side of platforms’ terms of service and build relationships based on trust.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not allow users to download or export the email addresses of your LinkedIn connections. This is to protect their members’ privacy and prevent misuse of their information. While some workarounds exist to try to scrape emails from LinkedIn, these violate LinkedIn’s terms of service and carry significant risks, including account bans. The best approach is to use legitimate, above-board methods to obtain accurate professional contacts for your business needs.