Remove LinkedIn Connections: How to Clean Up Your Network

Most professional people these days seem to have a LinkedIn account and it is very quickly turning into a marketing persons dream. I get a huge amount of sales and marketing people emailing and phoning me constantly trying to sell me stuff I nor my business want. Whenever I query where they got my details from, the answer is usually “LinkedIn”. This, of course, is completely my own fault for putting my contact details on LinkedIn and also by blindly accepting anyone that adds me. So, I have loads of people I don’t know (and don’t want to know!) as connections on my LinkedIn and I want to remove them – but how do you remove a LinkedIn connection?

Mobile Devices

It’s not possible to remove a connection from a mobile device – this is important that you know this as I spend quite some time on my iPad and iPhone trying to figure out how to remove a connection! To remove a connection from the desktop website:

• Go to the connection’s profile
• Click the More button (three dots) near the top of the profile
• Select Remove connection
• Confirm the removal when prompted

You can also do this from your full connections list rather than each profile individually:

• Click My Network at the top of your homepage
• Select Connections in the left-hand sidebar
• Use the search bar to find the person, or scroll to find them
• Click the three-dot icon next to their name
• Select Remove connection and confirm

Note that LinkedIn doesn’t currently offer a way to select and remove multiple connections in one go from the native interface. You’ll need to repeat this for each connection you want to remove. Connections you remove will no longer be a 1st-degree connection and will no longer appear in your Connections list. Before you remove any connections though, you should note the following:

• When you remove a connection, they won’t be notified.
• After removing a connection, any recommendations or endorsements between you and that person will be withdrawn. They will not be restored if the connection is re-established.
• Only the member who breaks the connection can re-initiate that connection.

Comments

If you have any questions about this, or if you have a story about getting battered with spam emails and calls as a direct result of your LinkedIn profile, we would love to hear from you so please leave a comment below using our comments section.