Smart Limits: how to avoid getting banned on social accounts

Risks of automating on social networks 

You are allowed to do a certain amount of actions per day on social networks. When they detect some anormal behaviour they can potentially log you out by telling you that you exceeded the maximum number of actions to perform during the day. 

⚠️ If you have any restriction from LinkedIn:

• Make sure the “country” selected on your user (here > Edit User > Country) match the location where you are when you log into your social media account to avoid any restrictions.

  Exercise caution when using a VPN. Either choose the exact same country where your VPN provides IPs to ensure a match, or log out from your VPN when logging into your Social Media Account.
  
  

• Using multiple automation tools at the same time (like different extensions or platforms) can cause issues. Many tools do not:

  • Manage limits well,
  • Handle IPs correctly,
  • Always perform cloud runs.

The basic rule is to not combine multiple automation tools & make sure you set the right Country (matching where you are or your VPN country if you have one). If you’re using other tools, it becomes difficult to track your quotas, which can lead to exceeding LinkedIn’s limits.

Our Smart limits system

Social networks are smart, but we are smarter.

The smart limits are limits we apply by default on your social accounts to prevent your accounts from getting banned. Our tech team performed loads of tests to detect at which level of automation the account could get disconnected. 

If the limit we have set is reached, the rest of your tasks will be automatically postponed in the next 24 hours and will continue to run automatically.

What does this mean?

• The limit operates on a 24-hour sliding window. For example, if it’s Wednesday at 2 PM, we check if the limit has been reached in the past 24 hours. If we find that we’ve hit the limit (1000/1000), we don’t proceed with the launch.
  
  We then check every 30min/hour based on the batch frequency set by the limit. So, when you check at 3 PM, you might see that space has been freed up (900/1000). In your case, that means there are 100 available inputs, but it could have been just 5 or another number. 

Where to see/adjust those limits?

To find these limitations for a specific integration, go to the "Integrations" section of the platform and select the social integration you want to check limitations for (e.g. LinkedIn).

If you connected an account, you'll see the limitations by clicking on Actions > Edit limits:

We will display a modal summarizing our recommended limits for your account to be safe:

Example: I see that I can send 25 connection requests per day without getting banned.

IMPORTANT: each limit can be edited. Not that if you change your limitations with a higher number, we won't be able to guarantee a safety for your accounts.

Also, Just to clarify, we can only track actions performed within the Captain Data platform and not those carried out manually on LinkedIn.

Table of limits

Classic & Sales Navigator Limits

Generic Limits

Generic limits are made in order to create automated batches in your jobs as "Extract LinkedIn People or Company Profile" to keep your account safe.

Check all accounts limitations

Go to the "Activity" section and on the "Accounts" section, select the "Limits" tab.

This will enable you to check where you're at in terms of limitations for each account.

You can also filter by Integration to get an overview of all your accounts limitations:

Note: You can click on the label limit to see all the pending jobs affected by this specific limit and see when the next job is going to be launched. 

Use case—how to investigate

What to check if you have a workflow with a running status, and a step with a scheduled icon with some inputs in the queue:

This means that the social media account used for this step has reached a limit and the robot has automatically scheduled your jobs for later, when your limit is available again.