Soft-Banned from LINE

In April 2025, LINE soft-banned my account with no warning and no explanation. Here’s what happened and where things stand.

The Initial Ban

On April 29th, 2025, I was suddenly greeted with an error message when trying to access my LINE account: “Authentication is temporarily restricted. Please try again after 60 days. [x3еA5_64].” No warning, no explanation, just an instant lockout from a service I routinely use for work communication.

Finding LINE’s official support channels proved to be a challenge in itself—the company seems to deliberately obscure how users can contact them for help. After considerable searching, I finally managed to reach their customer support, only to receive a frustratingly generic response (translated from the original Japanese):

“Thank you for using LINE and related services. This is LINE Customer Support.

Your service may have been suspended due to actions that violate the terms of service. The main criteria considered as violations of the terms of service are as follows:

• Posting content that is not socially acceptable, such as abusive language, obscene materials, or other obscene expressions

• Exchanging personal information (phone numbers, addresses, LINE IDs, etc.) or persistently soliciting or requesting one-on-one meetings

• Illegal activities including prohibited drug transactions and illegal transactions such as stocks

• Planning or soliciting unhealthy meetings or gatherings for minors”

The response provided a generic list of potential violations but offered no indication of which, if any, of these categories supposedly applied to my case.

The Partial Recovery

After the 60-day period expired on June 28th, I regained access to my account, but the damage was done. All of my chat history—years of conversations, important business communications, and personal memories—had been completely wiped. Worse still, I discovered I could no longer send messages. Every attempt was met with an error: “Message sending is temporarily restricted due to violation of terms of service.”

This has been going on for over three months. My account is essentially useless.

Legal Action

Given the significant impact on both my personal life and business operations, I decided to take legal action. On July 16th, 2025, my lawyer sent a formal notice to LINE Yahoo Corporation, citing several concerning issues¹:

1. Lack of transparency: No specific reason was provided for the enforcement action
2. Potential privacy violations: The action suggested improper monitoring of private communications
3. Breach of service contract: While LINE is technically a free service and users may not be legally entitled to continued access, the platform’s business model relies heavily on advertising revenue from users like myself. Given the extensive advertisements we encounter in the app and LINE’s critical importance in Japanese society, there is a reasonable expectation that service should be provided consistently and fairly

The legal notice also highlighted that LINE, with its 98 million monthly users in Japan, functions as critical social infrastructure, making arbitrary restrictions particularly problematic.

LINE’s Response

LINE’s response to the legal notice was disappointingly predictable and unhelpful. We received their response on August 14th (dated August 7th in their printed letter). They merely stated that the account had violated section 15 of their common terms of service² regarding “compliance matters when using our services,” and that they would provide no further guidance on the matter.

In other words: we banned you, we won’t say why, and we’re done talking about it.

What bothers me most is that even with a lawyer involved, there’s no real way to challenge this. LINE can suspend accounts, refuse to explain why, and just wait you out.

If anything, this reminded me not to rely on a single platform for important communications. Keep backups, keep alternatives.³

Moving Forward

Technically I could just get a new phone number and create a new account. But I shouldn’t have to — I didn’t do anything wrong. So the fight continues.