I Can No Longer Access the Email Address I Use for LinkedIn. Can I Still Log In?

You must grant permission before Persona shares any information from the ID with LinkedIn, including your full name, birthdate, address, ID type and issuer.

No biometric data, number, expiration or issue date associated with the ID will be shared, LinkedIn says, and LinkedIn will retain the information it has only for as long as it takes to recover your account, generally within two weeks. The Microsoft-owned company may retain “nonidentifying” data about your ID to prevent fraud.

Another option: A notarized affidavit

If you’re uncomfortable sharing a government ID, you can recover your account another way. Print and fill out the Affidavit of Identity available on LinkedIn’s website and have a notary public stamp and verify the document.

Among the information you’ll be asked to supply is the reason you can no longer access your LinkedIn account. Scan the completed form and return it to the LinkedIn customer service representative dealing with your case.

Getting a strange email notification?

If the email you try to use says it is registered to someone else, that someone else is probably you. Perhaps way back, you accepted an invitation to join LinkedIn with that email and forgot about it.

Also possible: Someone previously at the place you now work had the same email address, and it was recycled and issued to you. If so, contact LinkedIn customer service to try to reconcile the situation.

LinkedIn says this also could happen if a canonical form of an email address with periods or symbols in the first part of the address was used, along the lines of a.b.c@gmail.com instead of abc@gmail.com.

If you find out you have more than one LinkedIn account, you can either close the duplicate account or merge the two. You must confirm the primary email addresses used for both accounts before you can proceed, then contact LinkedIn customer support to merge them.

Keep in mind that LinkedIn does not permit multiple profiles. The company warns that the data associated with the account you want to merge will be purged from its database.

As a precaution, you can download a copy of the data on the account you’re about to close. Here’s how:

Click the circled Me icon with your picture at the top of LinkedIn’s home page. From the drop-down, choose Settings & Privacy | Data Privacy | Get a copy of your data.  Next, click the type of data you want to download. Choose either Download larger data archives, including connections, verifications, contacts, account history, and information we infer about you based on your profile and activity. Or select specific categories of data to download. After deciding, choose Request archive.

If you chose that larger download, LinkedIn will dispatch an email with a link. You will have 72 hours to fetch the data.

Certain data will not be merged, including profile content, endorsements, recommendations, pending invitations, and InMail credits. If you plan to merge accounts, remember to cancel any Premium subscriptions first.

And be aware that that you cannot download your account data onto a mobile device, so make sure the computer you are using is your own and not a machine in a public place. Moreover, since you can only download your own data and not that of other LinkedIn members, you won’t see data associated with the People You May Know or Who’s Viewed Your Profile features.

Bonus tip: Personalized your LinkedIn URL

LinkedIn assigns a web address or URL to you when you sign up, visible to the public. But LinkedIn lets you customize the URL to something more succinct that may better stand out on your resume or be easier to remember, important for job seekers.

Click the Me profile, then View Profile. Next to Public profile & URL, click the pencil icon ✏️, then under Edit your custom URL, click the pencil again. Type the new URL over the old one. It must contain three to 100 letters or numbers and not include spaces or special characters. If you’re satisfied, hit Save.

Note that you can change your public URL only five times within six months.