Should I be suspicious ... guy wants to run one of my forums?
 

I got an e-mail from a guy that wants to take contol of one of my forums for me... The forums are on a new domain that I just purchased a week or two ago and I have not really had time to set the website up yet...

He is asking me to give him ADMIN rights and I believe in vBulletin that there are different levels of Admin Power so I may be willing to do this in a way that I would still have some control over the ship...

Just makes me nervous to get an e-mail out of the blue from someone that want's to take the controls... still, it could be a benificial thing as well to the website as I am swamped with my normal daily life too...

The forums are here... yea not much but like I said it's only about a week old... The forums were split off another vB forum I have running

http://www.timeshareforums.com

Hmmm... I see no reason for you to give him admin rights.

Sounds a bit fishy to me...

I wouldn't give anyone I hadn't known for a long time on the forum any admin rights.. or any other rights for that matter. At the very least, tell him to join as a member and show his commitment first, that will give you a chance to get an idea of the kind of person he is.

Quite frankly I would tell him to go forth and multiply ....

As said above, you'd be crazy to give any kind of rights to someone on your forum you don't know. I most likely wouldn't give anyone the keys to mine even if I had known them for years ;)

I wouldn't give someone admin rights unless I knew them personally. Otherwise the highest right that I would give him would be a moderator right.

its up to you, maybe he's sincere, if your to busy to set things up and he is willing
to put forth the efforts then what do you have to lose?

its not like he can steal your vbulletin license you can easilly protect that.

Think of it like this.

You have 4 stores and one of them is selling just not making huge profits. Joe Schmoe comes and says give me access to all the books and inventory and the keys to the store and I'll run it for you...

Would you??

There's your answer.

Thanks guys! I am still trying to figure out what this is all about and as stated above this is kind of a virtual property so I always have the keys to simply give access and later remove this person's access as long as I have superadmin rights... If I add a new Admin... can that Admin go in and lock me out?

I was curious so I went in and set myself to SuperAdmin and the created a new account (for myself) and I noticed that the SUPERADMIN can set permissions for a new Admin as follows:

Can Administer Settings Yes No :down:
Can Administer Styles Yes No :down:
Can Administer Languages Yes No :down:
Can Administer Forums Yes No :up:
Can Administer Threads Yes No :up:
Can Administer Calendars Yes No :up:
Can Administer Users Yes No :down:
Can Administer User Permissions Yes No :down:
Can Administer FAQs Yes No :up:
Can Administer Avatars / Icons / Smilies Yes No :up:
Can Administer BB Codes Yes No :up:
Can Administer CRON Yes No :down:
Can Run Maintenance Tools Yes No :down:

I have ranked these based on how bad I think the risks would be...

I would not give out FTP power or the password to the MYSQL database so I always have the real power to the kill switch if needed... I really could use the help with the forum so I am quite tempted to give it a try... I was able to look his refererences and he seems like the real deal...

Best to sleep on a decision like this... thanks for the advise however as I agree this is a strange situation to be in... Mod Access... sure... Admin :ermm:

EDIT: OOOHHH NO!

Ok, I gave my new Admin account the power to ONLY Administer Users and I see that I was able to move my SuperAdmin Account to another group (looser group)... That is not good!

I next ONLY gave access to "Can Administer User Permissions" and there I see they could change the permissions of the Admin group to be locked out and make a new group to replace the Admin Group... :surprised: Not Good!

I do like how the CP gets reduced based on access rights and power... This may not be all so bad if limited correctly... They could have access to the forums and thread tools without me being able to take contol if I had to...

if you have server access there is no way he could lock you out.
besides what can he possibly do, steal your ID and your belongings?

even if he is super admin there is no way he can lock you out if you have ftp
access to the server.

You don't even need FTP access - Just having access to PhpMyAdmin will be enough ;)

Satan

Add your userid to the undeleteableusers in the config.php file.

You can prevent your admin account from being altered by adding it to the "UNDELETABLE / UNALTERABLE USERS" list in your config.php (normally just above the superadmins list).

Thanks guys... I never noticed that option before as I never needed it before :ermm: I have to be honest giving up some of the control and getting the help worked out... A doamin I had owned for less then two weeks and a new vBulletin license that I just purchased last week is looking like a real community...

Sometimes it is worth taking a chance...

I would just give him Super Moderator or Global Moderator rights and leave it at that. Unless you have a huge forum/member base there is really no need for two Admins. Why does he want admin rights?

Agreed, I wouldn't give him admin rights, what if he decides to go crazy and delete all your templates, cahge user information and such. that would be bad. I would suggest moderator levels only'

Odd, I'd just ask him for his credit card number in return.

Rename the usergroup "Super Moderator" to "Admin" and tell him he is now a god among men.

Regards,

Matt

I wouldn't trust anyone that Emailed me out of the blue to run my site. Just seems like hes after your vB info so he can get a copy or get access to this site to download hacks for his Illegal Vbulletin? Might want to ask and see if he runs a site with a vB, if so I would report him to Vbulletin and see if he is running a valid script?

I'm afraid I agree with most replies in this thread, I wouldn't give admin rights to anyone who just emailed me out of the blue. If you need help, look amongst people you already trust and know.

Good luck though with whatever you decide. :)

Well, I took a chance after some reference checks and it was well worth the risk...

Not everybody in the world is a crook and I now have a Community started...

http://www.timeshareforums.com