This morning’s Observer column.

A reader writes: “Dear John Naughton, As you write about the internet, I wondered if you knew how long it takes Yahoo to get back to people. I have an iPad, but went to the library to print a document (attached to an email). Yahoo knew I wasn’t on my iPad and asked me to name my favourite uncle. I replied, but Yahoo didn’t like my answer, so locked me out for 12 hours. I can’t get into my email account. Getting to the Help page is really difficult. Do you ever speak to anybody at Yahoo? I had to open another non-Yahoo email account, so I opened a Gmail account and it looks to have the same problem. Not easy to get in touch with anybody when things go wrong. I am sure I am not the only one who wants to discuss my problem with a human being. Yours sincerely…”

Dear Reader, I hear (and sympathise with) your pain, but we need to get something straight. These automated security systems lack all human context. The algorithm doesn’t care if you are an innocent library patron printing a family newsletter, or an ambitious entrepreneur drafting a business proposal for online gambling Texas legislators might legalize next session. It only sees an unrecognized IP address on a public network, and it panics. When a free service like Yahoo or Google flags a login anomaly, providing human customer support to investigate the nuance of your situation simply isn’t in their business model.