Why Can’t I Log IN to My LinkedIn Account?

This is great. A couple of weeks ago I twittered that I had canceled my LinkedIn account. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that my original account signup information was no longer valid and the LinkedIn support staff was unable to even locate my account, let alone reset my password or provide login access. I know the account was there, but no matter what I tried I could not login. So, without being able to update my information, my only choice was to delete the account and start over¹.

The following week, I was finally able to setup my new account. Everything went very well, and I managed to send out LinkedIn networking invitations to quite a few people on either my Monzilla Media or Perishable Press email/contact lists². After a successful round of building up my network, I signed off for the week and returned to my regular “offline” job as a Lab Tech.

Can’t log IN!

And that brings us to today. Upon returning to the computer this morning, I decided to login and check my LinkedIn account. Here’s the message I received after using the exact same email and password from several days ago:

The email address or password you provided does not match our records.

Very frustrating to say the least. Fortunately, the entire registration process was still fresh in my memory. During the LinkedIn account setup process, there is a registration progress-meter that says 50%, 75%, 85%, and so on until you have furnished all of the required information. At some point along the way, LinkedIn asks for additional or alternate email addresses³ in order to network with even more people:

Adding an email address is useful if you expect to be invited to connect at more than one address. We recommend that you add both a personal and work email address.

Yeah right. The problem is that, somewhere along the way, my primary email address — the one that I used during initial signup — was replaced with the secondary email address that was added while furnishing additional information. At no time during the process was this change made known to me, and I am assuming that it might have something to do with the hotmail address that I chose as my primary/login address.

In my opinion, LinkedIn should not be meddling with the user-defined email address that was chosen during the registration process, but rather leave any changes regarding login credentials entirely up to the individual. Such policy would save time, energy and money while eliminating frustration, confusion, and unnecessary duplicate accounts.

Moral of the story?

If you find yourself unable to login to your LinkedIn account using your original registration information, chances are high that LinkedIn decided to switch your primary email address to one of your alternate/additional email addresses. Thus, if you can remember which secondary addresses you added after registration, try using one of them (along with your original password) to login to your account. Fortunately, the second time around, I was able to remember my secondary address and use it to gain access.

Footnotes

• ¹ This is why some of you recently received another request to network with me on LinkedIn.
• ² Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!
• ³ For those of you who are planning on signing up with LinkedIn, remember to save any alternate/secondary email addresses added to your account.

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Designer. Developer. Producer. Writer. Editor. Etc.