Should I share my control panel login with others?
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:53 pm
You should never share your control panel login with anyone else.
The control panel login is meant to be uniquely and permanently tied to a single individual. It is used to define the one true owner ("primary user") of each service in our system. Attached to it in our database are all payment sources, current and former, and the entire payment history and support request history for an account. When a support request is opened, we use the account information to look up the service and to know who we are talking to, which allows us to keep track of what we've already told someone and heard from someone, resulting in more unified, coherent conversations.
Importantly, because it is used to define the owner of a service, whoever has access to the control panel login and the email address attached to the account can do whatever he or she wants with the service, including assigning it to a different account. If two people are sharing the login and one person unilaterally decides to shut out the other person, this means that he or she can do so. Allowing multiple people to share the login also substantially increases the risk of potentially unrecoverable account compromise by an outsider, such as through spyware on one of those admins' machines.
The best course of action is to define one individual as the owner of each service. That person is the primary user in our database and defines secondary users through the "Panel access" page, giving others separate access rights through their own accounts. The rights can be revoked or changed as needed later. If necessary, the designated owner can also be changed later.
As a further note, in the case of a managed dedicated server or managed VDS, the owner of the dedicated server/VDS has ultimate control. Each game server on the machine/VDS can have a different primary user, if desired, with that person having full control over only that game server, but the owner of the overall service can delete the game server or take back control at any time through the base "Panel access" page.
The control panel login is meant to be uniquely and permanently tied to a single individual. It is used to define the one true owner ("primary user") of each service in our system. Attached to it in our database are all payment sources, current and former, and the entire payment history and support request history for an account. When a support request is opened, we use the account information to look up the service and to know who we are talking to, which allows us to keep track of what we've already told someone and heard from someone, resulting in more unified, coherent conversations.
Importantly, because it is used to define the owner of a service, whoever has access to the control panel login and the email address attached to the account can do whatever he or she wants with the service, including assigning it to a different account. If two people are sharing the login and one person unilaterally decides to shut out the other person, this means that he or she can do so. Allowing multiple people to share the login also substantially increases the risk of potentially unrecoverable account compromise by an outsider, such as through spyware on one of those admins' machines.
The best course of action is to define one individual as the owner of each service. That person is the primary user in our database and defines secondary users through the "Panel access" page, giving others separate access rights through their own accounts. The rights can be revoked or changed as needed later. If necessary, the designated owner can also be changed later.
As a further note, in the case of a managed dedicated server or managed VDS, the owner of the dedicated server/VDS has ultimate control. Each game server on the machine/VDS can have a different primary user, if desired, with that person having full control over only that game server, but the owner of the overall service can delete the game server or take back control at any time through the base "Panel access" page.