Apollo and Seamless?
Dave Menjura ?
I connect U.S., Canadian, and UK companies with top-rated remote talent, sales agencies, and software providers | Hit 'Book an appointment' to create a job post, shortlist, and schedule interviews in minutes, at no cost.
LinkedIn is at it again, tightening its grip on data access, and this time, Apollo.io and Seamless.AI are in the crosshairs.
If you’ve been in sales for more than a minute, you’ve probably seen this coming.
LinkedIn has long been protective of its data, especially when third-party tools start skimming too much off the top.
The platform makes its money through ads and premium subscriptions, not by handing over contact details to automation tools that sidestep its ecosystem.
And now, sellers who leaned on these platforms for prospecting are feeling the impact.
Sometime on March 6, both Apollo and Seamless.AI vanished from LinkedIn, their business pages wiped, their Chrome extensions rendered useless for grabbing LinkedIn data.
While there’s no official statement from any of the companies involved, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots.
LinkedIn’s terms explicitly ban scraping, and these tools built entire business models around pulling LinkedIn data for sales teams.
It’s not the first time LinkedIn has cracked down on companies trying to extract its data—Mantheos Pte. Ltd. learned that the hard way when it was forced to shut down in 2022 after a lawsuit.
hiQ Labs went through a lengthy legal battle of its own, one that’s still tangled in appeals.
For sales teams, the immediate consequence is disruption.
If Apollo or Seamless.AI were part of your daily workflow, your prospecting process just got a whole lot more complicated.
No more quick LinkedIn profile extractions, no more seamless contact enrichment, no more automated job change tracking.
That means more manual research, more reliance on first-party data, and, for some, a shift to alternative tools—though that comes with its own risks.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator remains a compliant option, but it lacks the automation features that made these tools so appealing in the first place.
The broader shift here is clear: sales teams will have to get used to working within LinkedIn’s walled garden or find new ways to gather and verify prospect information without running afoul of the rules.
For those caught in the middle, the best move now is to assess risk, protect LinkedIn accounts, and consider alternative approaches.
That might mean focusing more on inbound strategies, relying on direct engagement rather than automated scraping, or using compliant tools that aggregate data from multiple sources rather than pulling straight from LinkedIn.
The days of unrestricted LinkedIn scraping were numbered from the start, and this latest crackdown just reinforces that reality.
Whether this leads to formal data partnerships, new tools that work within LinkedIn’s restrictions, or just more creative workarounds, one thing’s for sure—sales teams are going to have to adjust.