LinkedIn is the account families most often forget, and the one that produces some of the most painful moments months later: a recruiter's cheerful message to someone who has died, a work anniversary notification, the profile surfacing in "People you may know" for former colleagues. A live LinkedIn profile also carries real security risk, because a professional identity with an established network is valuable to fraudsters.
The good news is that LinkedIn has one of the clearer processes among the major platforms, with two distinct routes depending on who you are and what you want.
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The Two Routes: Memorialise or Close
Memorialisation locks the account. The profile stays visible as a record of the person's career, but no one can log in, it stops appearing in connection suggestions and notifications, and messaging is disabled. Anyone, including a colleague or friend, can request this.
Closure removes the profile entirely and permanently. Because deletion is drastic, LinkedIn only accepts closure requests from people with legal authority to act for the deceased: an immediate family member, or the executor or administrator of the estate, with documents to prove it.
Many families memorialise first, which stops the painful notifications immediately, and request closure later once the estate paperwork is in hand. That is a sensible order and LinkedIn allows it.
Route One: Request Memorialisation
Open the person's profile and copy the address, which looks like linkedin.com/in/name. If you cannot find it, search their full name plus their most recent employer.
In LinkedIn's Help Centre, search "deceased member" and choose the option to report a member as deceased. The form works whether or not you have a LinkedIn account yourself.
You will be asked for the person's name, the profile URL, your relationship to them, the date of death, and evidence such as a link to an obituary or a death notice. For memorialisation, a formal death certificate is often not required, though attaching one strengthens the request.
Route Two: Request Full Closure
LinkedIn accepts closure requests from immediate family or the person legally handling the estate. If that is not you, either memorialise instead or ask the executor to make the request.
You will need the death certificate, proof of your own identity, proof of your relationship or legal authority, such as a marriage certificate, birth certificate, grant of probate, or letters of administration, and the profile URL. Clear scans or photos are fine.
Use the deceased member closure option in the Help Centre. LinkedIn reviews the documents, sometimes asks follow up questions by email, and then removes the account. Allow a few weeks, and reply promptly to any request for more information to avoid the case going stale.
Common Problems
The profile keeps appearing in searches after memorialisation
Search engines cache LinkedIn profiles. The page itself is locked, but a Google result can linger for weeks. You can ask Google to refresh an outdated result through its "Remove outdated content" tool; otherwise the cached result expires on its own.
Duplicate or impersonation profiles
Professional identities get cloned. If a second profile appears using the person's name, photo, or history, report it through LinkedIn's impersonation reporting, which is faster than the bereavement route and does not need estate documents.
The person ran a company page
A LinkedIn company page is separate from a personal profile and does not close with it. If your loved one was the sole admin of a company page, LinkedIn has a separate process for claiming admin access, and it is worth resolving while the estate is being handled, especially if the business is being wound down or sold.
We Can Handle LinkedIn, and Everything Else
LinkedIn is rarely the only account. Departed Digital manages the person's whole digital estate in one case: Facebook, Instagram, Google, Apple, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, and more. You send the documents once, we run every platform's process and follow up until each account is memorialised or closed, and you receive a written record for the family and the estate.
Packages start from £149, and checkout shows your local currency automatically. We work with families in the UK and internationally.
Let us handle it. One case covers LinkedIn and every other platform, with documents, requests, and follow up included. Start a case →