An online platform dedicated for employment purposes, LinkedIn is a place where users can develop their careers or businesses whether it be for job seekers to find a job or companies to find new employees. Users can save connections to form their own professional networks and promote their services or skills through their LinkedIn profile. It has over 65 million users and can be used through any web browser or its mobile app.
With its large user base, whether it’s for business or analysis, gathering various data on its users would become a huge undertaking. It would take a lot of time and manual effort. The best way to effectively do this, is to scrape data from the entire platform through bots. Bot automation can quickly streamline the entire process of collecting data. The problem is that LinkedIn, like many other social media platforms, doesn’t like the use of bots or scrapers in its site and bans any account caught using one.
So, to effectively and safely scrape LinkedIn, you need the help of LinkedIn proxies. Proxies act as an intermediary between your device and the internet. This means that any website you visit will only be able to see the proxy server’s IP address and it will not be able to see your own IP address. With rotating proxies, everytime your bot sends a request to LinkedIn, the request would come through a different IP on a set time making it hard for LinkedIn to discover you're using a bot and ban you.
The best proxies to use for LinkedIn would be residential proxies. These types of proxies use residential IP addresses from actual devices, making your bots appear as if they were “real” users with an actual IP address. Proxies are also useful when you want to create and manage multiple LinkedIn accounts, increase your anonymity, and safely access any website.
Let’s configure your LinkedIn proxy settings.
For Windows:
To set up proxies in Windows, simply search for “Proxy Settings” in your windows search bar and open the search result.
You are then given two options to choose from: Automatic proxy setup or Manual proxy setup. If you want windows to automatically detect your proxy settings, choose the first option. Choose the second option if you want to utilize a specific ip address and port number.
If you chose the first option, then:
- Turn on Automatically detect Settings
- Turn on Use setup script
- Enter the script address
- Click Save
If you chose the second option, then:
- Turn on Use a proxy server
- Input both server address and port number
- If you have any addresses you would like to visit without a proxy, enter them here
- Turn on Don’t use the proxy server for local addresses check box if you want to access a local server without a proxy
- Click Save
For Mac.
To start configuring your proxy settings in MacOS, simply:
Step 1. Click on the Apple Icon.
Step 2. On the drop down menu, click on “System Preferences”.
Step 3. Click on “Network”
Step 4. Click on “Advanced”
Note: Make sure to connect to your wi-fi first.
Step 5. Click on “Proxies”
This should then redirect you to MacOS proxy settings. MacOS is more straightforward compared to windows. You only have one option which is to manually configure your proxy server.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Select which proxy IP protocol you want to configure. This depends on which protocols your proxy service provider offers.
- Turn on Secure Web Proxy
- Input the Proxy Server Address and Port Number
- Click OK to save the configurations
Note: You may be prompted for your Mac user password to save your settings.
For Mobile:
To configure LinkedIn mobile proxies, simply change your phone’s proxy settings. LinkedIn’s proxy settings simply copy your phone’s proxy settings whenever you use it. Here’s a thorough guide for Android and another one for iPhone.
Congratulations! You have now set up a proxy server for LinkedIn. Note that the first time you visit it, there will be a pop up asking for your login credentials.
Note: Make sure that the web browser you’re using for LinkedIn is automatically copying your system’s proxy settings. It’s recommended to use Google Chrome because it automatically does this.
