It is never a good idea to have anyone open an account for you using their information. We have seen this cause several problems in the past. Whenever an account is opened the person who’s name is entered in the billing system as the primary contact is technically the account owner whether or not this is what was actually meant. Now lets look at how this can cause problems:
1) Many times a customer who is not so familiar with maintaining their site will have their web designer or site admin open account in the name of the web designer or admin. Later on the actual domain owner may want to fire the admin or web designer. However, if the admin or web designer is not doing business honestly they may not hand over your account so easily or they may even attempt to do something to damage your site such as taking down your files or deleting the account all together.
2) It is very common for a web designer or admin to purchase and account in their own name and use their credit card information to pay for account as you the customer have already paid them directly. In most of these case the person will pay in advance for a year or so although this can apply to any billing cycle. Your site will run fine within that period but once it’s time for renewal you may have lost contact with the person who setup account for you. Account would then become suspended as no payment was made and you would be unable to access account as you are not listed as owner or a contact.
There are several other scenarios that could take place.
The best way to go about this is the following:
Setup account in your name and if needed when going through the order process list your web design or admin as a secondary contact. This way they may still contact us for support or sales request buy all major changes must be done by the primary contact which would be you. As primary contact should the need arise you will also always have access to remove the secondary contact.
Another thing to be aware of is account password. In most cases the web designer will only need access to upload your web site. From that point on your site would either be static or updates would be done through a Blog such as wordpress or joomla where you would be the one writing the content. In these cases after your web designer has done their job it is best to update your password so they no longer have access. If they need to do future work you may provide them the current password and once they are done once again change password to something new. If you have an admin who is constantly updating your web site I wouldn’t advise on changing on changing the password as they would obviously need access, but I do advise on two things:
1) You should always have the current password for your site and make sure it wasn’t updated to something you are not aware of.
2) You should familiarize yourself with how to update your password should the need arise.
Account security is a never ending process. Stay tuned for the next tip.