Back up your LinkedIN data!

It's all nice to have all my data in the cloud, but I also like to back it up. In case I get locked out or who knows what happens.

For example, I have a reminder every month to back up my data from LinkedIn. Primarily the list of my connections though now that I am writing this I'll also check how could I backup all my other data from LinkedIn.

This backup is kept in a private git repository on GitHub as well.

Here is how I do it:

1. Visit LinkedIn
2. Click on "Me" (my avatar in the top right corner)
3. Click on Settings & Privacy
4. Click on Data Privacy
5. Click on Get a copy of your data
6. I am mostly interested in Connections so I check that box. You might want others as well.
7. Click on Request Archive

It will take some time for LinkedIn to prepare the zip file, but they will send you an email with a link.

Once I receive that email I click on the link and download the zipfile which is called something like Basic_LinkedInDataExport_12-05-2022.zip

Handle the downloaded file

1. cd to the workdir of the git repository where I keep my private data
2. unzip the file: unzip ~/Downloads/Basic_LinkedInDataExport_12-05-2022.zip
3. sort the content with sort Connections.csv -o Connections.csv
4. Remove the "empty" rows from the beginning. (For some reason there every time there are a few 10s of rows with only commas. I remove those.
5. Move the line that starts with First Name to the beginning of the file. This is the header of the file that is moved away by the sort.
6. Commit the file to git and push it out.

Automate this?

I am sure I could automate the process, but I don't think it is worth my time to do so.