Closing a LinkedIn account after a death
When someone dies, their LinkedIn profile stays up. Colleagues keep getting work anniversary reminders and suggestions to connect. This page explains the two things LinkedIn offers and why one of them takes more paperwork than people expect.
What LinkedIn can do
Memorialize. Anyone can report that a member has died. The profile is memorialized and the reminders about it stop.
Close. The account is closed and its data deleted. Only someone with documented legal authority over the estate can ask for this.
What LinkedIn asks for
- To memorialize: the person's name, the link to their profile, the email on the account if you know it, their most recent employer, the date of death, your relationship, and a link to an online obituary or death notice. No death certificate is needed for this.
- To close: a certified death certificate, plus court-issued authority, such as Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration.
LinkedIn's page states that it does not accept a will, a trust, a power of attorney, ID documents, screenshots or informal paperwork as proof of authority. If you do not yet have court-issued letters, memorializing the profile is usually the step available now.
LinkedIn does not ask for the person's password, and no one should ever ask you for it.
How to do it yourself
LinkedIn's page is here: Memorialize or close the account of a deceased member. It links to the request form. The profile link and last employer help LinkedIn find the right account.
LinkedIn's page says notifications about the member stop within about 48 hours of it acting, and that after a closure, deleting the data can take up to 30 days.
If you would rather not do this twenty times
LinkedIn is usually one of many. Email, photo storage, shopping, streaming, subscriptions still charging a card. Most families do not know what accounts exist until the statements arrive.
We check your loved one's identifiers against the platforms people actually use, confirm what each one requires, and submit the closure or memorialization requests through each platform's official process, including LinkedIn. We work from a death certificate and proof of authority. We never ask for a password. When the last platform has replied, you receive one closure report covering every platform we checked, including where no account was found.
Standard Closure is $300. Custom Closure, which adds the accounts you name, is $400. The fee is agreed before we begin.
We are not affiliated with LinkedIn. LinkedIn's process and timing are LinkedIn's, and can change. Financial, investment and government accounts are outside what we handle; the executor deals with those directly.