What does 'Profile Not Found' mean?
NOTE: "Profile Not found" was replaced by "This profile is not available" early in 2017.
As to what these warnings mean, I'm not totally sure, and I'd like to encourage some crowd-sourcing to learn more.
You know what a profile URL is. Here's a familiar one:
(NOTE: No approval or endorsement by JW or LinkedIn claimed or implied.)
Scenario: You have the direct URL web address of another LinkedIn member's profile.
- Perhaps you were given it on a business card or an email signature.
- Perhaps you turned it up in a Google search.
- Or perhaps you visited the profile once and saved the URL in a document.
You surf to that URL with your browser. A screen like the following appears:
Note that the screen below became obsolete when the "new UI" of early 2017 was rolled out. In the earlier version below, you could see the URL to which you surfed to be sure it was what you intended. With the new interface above, you're redirected to a fixed path (linkedin.com/in/unavailable) and you see the "unavailable" graphic.
You entered the URL accurately into the browser address bar. You'd been able to see the person's profile in the past. What is going on?
Here are some possibilities:
- You blocked the person. Help article here
- The person blocked you. Same Help as above.
- The person closed his or her own account. Help article here
- LinkedIn closed the person's account. No Help available--internal LinkedIn secrets.
- LinkedIn put the account on temporary suspension (not a permanent closure). Help article here
- Something else happened.
As best as I have been able to fathom, all the conditions 1 through 5 above return the same message. There may be other possibilities that I'm not aware of (Case 6).
Why the lack of clarity?
Why would LinkedIn display the same message in all these situations? My guess is that they want to give some measure of privacy to a profile owner who "goes missing." They do not want us to be certain of actions they take to punish members, so they "put up a smoke screen" by using the same message to cover both innocent and suspect scenarios.
The Crowd-Sourcing part
Can you give me some inputs in the comments below? Please tell me...
- ... in your experience, is it correct that Cases 1 through 5 all return the same Profile Not Found message? If not, what other messages have you seen?
- ... is there some other "Case 6" that returns Profile Not Found and if so, what are the details?
Thank you.
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Screenshots processed in MS PowerPoint and Photoshop Elements 10.0.
Cover graphic from FreePik.com processed in Canva.com.
Clinical Research Associate / Solutions Engineer at Northwestern University - The Feinberg School of Medicine
2 年(2022-05-16) It appears that, if a Web page has a direct link to Contact information in a LinkedIn profile, and someone who is NOT LOGGED IN to LinkedIn clicks on that link, the response MAY be "An exact match for ... could not be found." Or the response may be "Let's do a quick security check". Or "Join LinkedIn". Which of the three responses occurs varies from time to time and depending on the browser used. A work-around is to link to the profile instead of directly to the contact information. Took me about three hours to figure this out, and it's based on trial, error, observation, and speculation, and it may change tomorrow, so don't count on it, but maybe this could be helpful to someone.
经验丰富的私募股权执行官 - 基金战略、组建和设立; 覆盖科技、新经济、消费、医疗和基础设施的多个美元基金
2 年Hello, i sent an invitation on which no action was taken. When later i revisited the profile is was: https://www.dhirubhai.net/404/ "This page doesn't exist" ... is it possible it was removed as a fake? is it possible they blocked me? NOTE: it wasnt the "this profile not found” thanks！
平面设计
2 年Sounds like some fraud business.
Sr Marketing Consultant | Lead Generation | Paid Media
3 年https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/gabyorthodontics/