Pinterest suspended my account but restored it quick on appeal - what not to do and do if you do

idealmike Level X³

April 22, 2017, 6:47 pm

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Pinterest suspended my account but restored it quick on appeal - what not to do and do if you do

So I love my Pinterest account, as you all probably know lol from my raves and rants about in the past! And I and others have posted quite a few things about Pinterest here before so I hope Pinterest see this and know it too!

Including

Anyway yesterday I managed to get my Pinterest account suspended much to my shock, horror and devastation! Devastation might be a strong word but I was a bit bent out of shape about it to say the least.

I was just sending some board invites and I did send quite a lot at once. I usually use Firefox and when you've got to send 100+ it can take a while just to copy and paste the board URLs and open and load about 10 boards at once but that's cool as I usually only send invites in small batches of about that much spread out over a day or so. But on this occasion I found some Chrome addon that lets you open a list of URL's you paste in the box and it opens them in tabs and I tried it with about 50 urls and it Chrome being Chrome had no problem opening that many boards all at once unlike firefox would have done and just crashed and burned on me but once they all loaded I can just tab through them quickly and do them.

And I have to admit that might seem like a lot of board invites to send at once and it might seem quite a spammy thing to do to send that many invites all at once too. I usually can send about 25 board invites quite quick before although all done manually in firefox and not had a problem. And they don't really care about board invites or how many you send to who or whatever board. But they do have flood control in place much like any forum or other social media site does.

What I've learned though is that these flood controls are quite small at first but the longer you are on Pinterest and the more you do this kind of thing they seem to decrease and you can send more without triggering it. You know because it usually shows a popup saying you're doing that too much and have been temporarily restricted from using that feature or something. I'm not sure how long that block lasts probably 12 - 24 hours as you can usually resume the next day.

But generally when it comes to board invites, Pinterest don't really care about them as said, it's what you pin that matters. And I don't go mad on pins, I hardly pin that much apart from my FAQ posts here and on the other Ionicware sites LD, WC, PC, ST etc. And of course, my clients as well which I'm usually careful about who I work for being picky and choosy about what I pin as well and only ever really pin every now and then family friendly stuff and nothing even remotely questionable or rique if you know what I mean!

Pinterest suspended my account but restored it quick on appeal - what not to do and do if you do

Because I've seen many people get their accounts burned and suspended and each time it's usually because of what they were pinning and how much pinning they're doing! That in conjunction with other high levels of "suspicious activity" can get your account flagged and suspended. And this seems to happen automatically by Pinterest. Hence the appeal process. And that may have been what happened here for me, As I'd just sent about 50 invites quite quickly and was pinning one of my clients pins to some boards and after about the 10th pin (I usually only pin to about 10 boards the same pin every hour), Pinterest logged me out which I thought was strange but had a suspicion already why that happened.

And I check my email and I have an email from them saying "Your Pinterest account has been suspended".

So I go to login again just to check what it would say and it was saying this account has been suspended, if you believe this to be an error get in touch or something along with link to an article you could not click on but I found it anyway and eventually found my way to a form to fill in which I'll quickly run through what to on each to appeal your account suspension if it ever does. So you'll be send to this knowledge base article with some login trouble options which has some options to click on and you'd choose the your account was suspended option. Then select the Getting into my account and then Appeal account suspension.

From here I was able to click the "Your account was suspended" option and there is a link that appears below it saying get in touch with us. From there you are given some more options on what to do if you need help. Click on Getting into my account and then Appeal account suspension and then click on the red I still need help button below. This will open a form on the right of the page in which you can fill in. The actual description I used was;

Hello there. I have just got a notice from Pinterest that my account has been suspended. I'm not sure why. I was pinning some images to some boards and sent a few invites. But that was about it. I don't use Pinterest for anything like spamming or anything like that. I'm absolutely devastated about this as I absolutely love Pinterest! Can you help me with this and reactivate my account for me? I look forward to hearing from you! Thanks kindly and regards, Mike.

It might have laid it on a bit thick but you do for the things you care about!

Put the title "Account suspended I'm sorry!" or something which I did lol. And put a description about what you was doing. I was honest and said I was just sending some board invites and pinning something. Fill in the rest and then submit it. You should then get an email from Pinterest telling you that the appeal request has been received and they will review it.

Along with the one telling you your account was suspended.

Anyway I submitted the form with my message went to hold my breath, crossed my fingers and toes and hoped they would see light, review it and then restore my account. I was actually a bit bent out of shape about this when it happened as I love my Pinterest account lol.

And as said I don't use it for spamming pins with like some people do which is why their accounts get burned and when they appeal it they usually don't get them restored because they manually look at it and see the activity on it and know that it's only being used to spam with. So they must have looked at mine, realized that it was an error and then restored it!

I don't think I got an email to say it had been restored but just checked from something and saw I was logged in and everything was showing. And that was very pleasing to see my account and boards and past pins all showing up again.

But that's basically what happened and why, what I done about it and my account restored to good standing. I was quite impressed actually as I'd been reading around on some horror stories how it's happened to some people and they've had no luck despite repeated appeals but I do suspect some of them were probably pinning too much but it can happen to those that don't pin that much too but it can still happen but they obviously saw my account as valuable enough to restore it and I'm happy with that with my small followings and that.

Sorry for the essay lol but I hope you find it useful to know!

Follow me on Pinterest https://pinterest.com/idealmike/
Follow our SEOClerks Community board! https://pinterest.com/idealmike/seoclerks/
And on SEOClerks and I'll follow back! https://www.seoclerks.com/user/idealmike

Mike.

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clerkboy3

Not happy with this

I'm glad that you recovered your account but the simple fact that you have been suspended it is not good news!
So, it is easier to be suspended than it was before?
Let's say that somebody creates a good pin with an affiliate offer and posts the pin to 100 related groups, is the person going to be suspended?

9 years ago

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idealmike

Thanks mate. If you do those 100 pins too fast then it's likely you will trigger flood control and then that may get your account automatically suspended pending an appeal and review. And that's fair enough. But they would then look at the account as a whole, (after your appeal) and see what it's been doing and how it's been doing it. If they saw that you was pinning tons of affiliate links only (and not images and things you actually like like you're supposed to) then it's unlikely they would restore that account. Pinterest want people to pin the things they actually like and not use it just to pin affiliate links. It's okay to do that, but more as a business account and not so much as a personal user of it. But even business accounts shouldn't just pin 100 affiliate pins to 100 community boards and if they do, they should mix it up a bit, spread it out, pin in between pinning other things, things that don't even have links, just images you like. So yeah, I don't know if it's easier to get suspended but they definitely have flood control in place to prevent people from doing that and that's good as well as imagine what it would be like if there was no flood control in place. It would just be a complete smorgasbord and sea of affiliate links and that's not a Pinterest I want to browse through for ideas and pinspiration and it's not what they want either. But as said, you can still pin affiliate links now (again). And they did stop that for a while because a lot of people were basically taking the piff by pinning just affiliate links only. So the writing's on the wall. You can do it, but don't overdo it. Take it slowly slowly catch a monkey and fly under the radar and you should be fine.

9 years ago

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Cristian

Thanks for the info Mike! I didn't know Pinterest had this set of rules and auto triggers, good to know for the future, especially if I will ever get into Pinterest marketing.

9 years ago

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cmoneyspinner

What I like is the fact that they responded. When I first started using Pinterest, I did notice that some of my links were flagged as “spammy” links. I did my best to fix whatever I could find wrong. Pinterest was new at the time. I was new to the whole social media world. You could say we grew together.

Fortunately, I have never had my account suspended. I was surprised when I received an email inviting me to convert my personal account to a business account, free of charge. My experience with Pinterest has been very good right from the start. It is good to know you were able to report on a positive experience as well after such a shock! I have 50+ Pinterest boards and I am addicted.

9 years ago

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SEOClerks

Pinterest suspended my account but restored it quick on appeal - what not to do and do if you do

Pinterest suspended my account but restored it quick on appeal - what not to do and do if you do

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clerkboy3

idealmike

Cristian

cmoneyspinner

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