Karlin Lillington: Why LinkedIn needs to go away

Professional network and mobile-based plane tickets today’s most aggravating tech

Having had a couple of weeks now during which I’ve considered some weighty internet and technology related issues on various panels and seminars and in this column, it seemed only right to put that collective heavy thinking to work on the very worst of our technology problems.

You know the ones. I am sure they perturb you as much as me.

Let’s start with mobile-based plane tickets, which are on my mind as I have just returned from a short trip to the United Kingdom. Does anyone else die just a little when someone in the security line, gate-entry point, or plane boarding moment, pulls out their mobile phone to produce their digital boarding card?

What bright tech boffin thought that mobile tickets would have some extra convenience factor for travel?

READ MORE

Let’s start with the fact that, sometimes, security people just state they will not accept an e-ticket on a handset. I’ve heard of this happening several times now, forcing people to exit the (inevitably long and snaking) security line to return to the check-in desk and be issued a paper boarding card.

Okay, so that inconvenience primarily affects the traveller, but it also creates a delay for the rest of us while an argument ensues and we all grow embarrassed and fidgety.

I do concede that if the airlines issues a ticket in this format, security staff should be obliged to accept them.

However, my more immediate annoyance involves being stuck at a boarding point behind the people using their mobile tickets, who seem to live in the same realm of “who cares about anyone else” as those supermarket shoppers who gaze into the distance as their shopping basket is rung through at the till, and only then seem to wake from a reverie, notice they have just bought 138 items, and sleepily start to grope around for a card or cash as if surprised to find themselves there at all.

In the mobile ticket equivalent, people shuffle up to the gate staff and then fiddle about finding their phone in pocket or handbag or backpack. Then, we all wait for the document to open, and of course, the barcode never scans properly and there’s much faffing about with the handset and the scanner. Sheesh. Meanwhile, 14 people with home-printed boarding cards fly through the other queue.

Next up: that secure pay "feature" for credit cards whereby a security window pops up just as you think you've completed the transaction for your new boots or books or whatever you've ordered online.

Yes, I know the extra security is important to prevent fraud. But how many times have you been locked out of your own credit and debit cards because you thought you knew your password (a different one for each card) and the complex, mandatory mix of upper and lower case letters, numerals and sweary symbol keys, got it wrong three times and were excommunicated by your bank?

So then you go sit on the help line for a few hours and they reset your card but this necessitates creating a new password next time you buy online and the whole evil process begins again. Wouldn’t a secure, two-factor authentication approach work better, where I might validate the transaction by being sent a code by phone or email?

Which brings up the next point: the music and/or advertising you are forced to endure while you wait in the queue to get the guy who helps you reset your card’s security. Banks: please splurge on more than one song. If not, when I become dictator, I will require all companies with phone help lines to enable customers to select a song playlist sorted by musical genre if they are going to be exiled on hold for more than a single rendition of a song.

It’s those looping synthesised renditions of just one hideous song that do my head in (or, looping advertisements). Over and over and over… no wonder we are all so irritable by the time we actually speak to someone. The experience would be better for all parties if we could press 2 for classical, press 3 for 80s hits, and so on.

And finally but most aggravating of all: LinkedIn. Just all of it. Make it go away.

The connection requests that I have to go click “OK” to, from people I will never talk to and who will never contact me. I’ve got 209 waiting there at the moment; that’s how long it has been since I even looked at my account.

The messages, which I almost never see until weeks or months after people send them (I am so sorry, all of you who message me through LinkedIn).

The people who validate you for various skills you never asked them to validate you for, and on which you have to go OK. Or alternatively, continue to ignore as they grow into a pile. The notifications of groups people want to add you to. The… wait a minute.

At least that one, I can fix. Bye bye, LinkedIn.