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Is it possible to add the option


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  • Management

Much like taking your vehicle to a mechanic, there's often not much we can do for you if you don't let us have access under the hood. :)

All IPS employees have signed a comprehensive contract to protect the integrity of your data. They are entrusted with access to the largest and most securest sites imaginable and in over a decade, we have not had one single lapse of security from an employee.

Your access is safe at IPS, however, if you prefer not to grant it - that is certainly fine, but per our standards of service, our ability to help you is limited and delays may ensue.

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There is the 48 hours delay. First 24 hours on the simple (not VIP) tech support I am waiting the answer. And the answer is generally "Please, provide the access to your everything: ftp, AdminCP, etc." The second 24 hours I am waiting the answer to my reply that I can not or do not provide the access".

It is generally known in internet that all services like Facebook, Vk.com (Russian), Twitter and all other similar are under the governmental supervision. I am not talking about your company directly or inderectly now. But in all cases all companies like yours or any other are obligated to provide any type of information they have in case of any FBI, CIA, police, etc. investigations. That is why that this is not just the question of confidence to your emploees.

That is why it could be the gester of goodwill from your company if you would have provided the additional function (checkbox) of not providing any access to the user data if the user do not like it.

And additionally speaking, this is the user's time wasting because the user can not use the site while the other user (tech support) is having access to the AdminCP.

Thank you for your service.

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  • Management

I understand and sympathize with your concerns, certainly. Unfortunately, it's just far too labor intensive to have our techs state "upload this file, change this setting, upload this file, let us know the result and then send us this file." It's similar to asking your mechanic to walk you through changing an alternator... "open your hood, disconnect the battery cable, stick a 12mm ratchet and socket on the belt tensioner, apply pressure and remove belt. Loosen and remove the two supporting bolts holding the alternator to the bracket on the block. Remove alternator...." etc. He's a mechanic in the business to fix cars not train others how to fix them. :)

We could certainly add a checkbox indicating that you do not wish to provide access. What then? Beyond how do I questions, if we need access to fix an issue, a checkbox isn't going to eliminate that need.

As an alternative, some customers feel more comfortable creating secondary access for our staff, putting it on file and only enabling it when they need tech assistance. In your case, even if we were to get a court order to provide access info, it would not be valid unless you deem it to be.

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As an alternative, some customers feel more comfortable creating secondary access for our staff, putting it on file and only enabling it when they need tech assistance. In your case, even if we were to get a court order to provide access info, it would not be valid unless you deem it to be.

this is what I do, their ftp access is only to the directory board is in.

I can turn it on/off as needed and it covers concerns while giving needed access.

someone that wants a tech to fix stuff w/o allowing access to the stuff is wasting everyones time.

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And additionally speaking, this is the user's time wasting because the user can not use the site while the other user (tech support) is having access to the AdminCP.

Just to note here, this isn't technically strictly speaking true. You can create us our own user account (invisionpower or something), and fill those details out in your Client Area. Then, when you need us to investigate an issue on your site you can grant that account Administrator access. Once we're done you can then remove the administrator permissions from that account.

You can also do the same for FTP information. :)

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I just wonder all situation. I of course do not want to push you to follow my opinion how it could be. But I just wonder. I know that Google, Firefox, Yandex and others are paying customers for the found bugs. And it is generally the company side who is testing and providing patches, not users. For example, when I am using MS Windows, though there are a lot of bugs there, no one is asking my PC (or server) access. I am firmly confident that this is the company's responsibility to have enough testers to solve any questions without the user. For example, you can ask about my server enviorment (linux version, database engine, IPB version, etc.) without any direct access to my server. Or at least you can try to show that there is the posibility of privacy by providing the checkbox I was talking about.

Thank you again for your development of this product. It was my opinion how you can give people one more chance if they like to have it.

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The problem is, Ivan, often times something will work in our tests, that does not on a clients site. It's not just server environment that can be a cause, it could be a 3rd Party hook installed, for example. Or maybe a specific configuration that is in your settings. There are multiple factors that can take effect on an issue, and it's not as simple as just asking "What is X setting set too?" Or "What happens when you do this?"

Using that methodology, a ticket could, literally, take days or even weeks to get to the bottom of the problem. With at least an Admin Login, we can log in and check these things instantly, and then find the issue.

I believe your last ticket was regarding IP.Downloads topic posting, with the screenshot not being embedded properly in the topic. This is actually a perfect example. We can certainly advise on this by telling you to add "php" to your Allowed Image Extensions setting. However, if that does not work, we're back to square one again. We cannot reproduce the issue, however you are still having the problem. With at least an Admin Login we can correctly determine if that is, in fact, the issue and advise on how to correct it right then and there, and avoid a lot of unnecessary back and forth with changing settings. If that doesn't correct it, we can continue our investigation immediately into WHY it's still not working.

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We can certainly advise on this by telling you to add "php" to your Allowed Image Extensions setting.

I am not sure this is the right place to discuss all this staff. But as soon as you told this, I am providing my php coder answer:

"Adding php to the allowed image extensions is not safe in case of our present server configuraion."

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I'm mightily confused by this topic. As has been explained, you are asking for support, to provide that support without access, which generally is an exercise in futility.

Something that would take 10 minutes to debug/fix with access turns into hours to even find the issues source(if you are lucky and can find it).

This is not an OS, this does not have complete control of the environment it runs on, YOU do, and that can in fact lead to issues trying to do 'no-access' support... which is very generally(no offense) going to === extremely limited support.

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I'm mightily confused by this topic. As has been explained, you are asking for support, to provide that support without access, which generally is an exercise in futility.

Something that would take 10 minutes to debug/fix with access turns into hours to even find the issues source(if you are lucky and can find it).

This is not an OS, this does not have complete control of the environment it runs on, YOU do, and that can in fact lead to issues trying to do 'no-access' support... which is very generally(no offense) going to === extremely limited support.

May be you are right in case there are a lot of bugs and customers. I just want to spend more time with my child rather being engaged in all this bugs reporting without any reward. I like to use this product without any alternative on the market. And the product is really good for my opinion on the other hand. Thank you.

I mean, that almost in all help requests (bug reports) tickets I should provide the access according to the support constant requests.

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Just give IPS the access they need and be done with it. You're causing yourself an unnecessary amount of inconvenience due to paranoia. I've not heard of one incident of an IPS employee doing anything untoward with a users data.

You can of course, as has already been suggested multiple times, grant them temporary access to fix the issue after which you revoke it again.

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I am just the simple buyer from the street and I do not know much about the company and its staff. I am sorry about this topic and any inconvenience because of it. I will try to use help of our team php coder. May be I should more serious investigate which version is stable before the purchase. Thank you. Shanti, shanti.

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I really don't see the problem with providing access. It's very easy to create an FTP and ACP user with no direct access to harmful tools or directories - on my own server, the (usually disabled) IPS Support account can only access and modify files in the IP.Board root directory (I'm too lazy to work out how to root the FTP access to a specific directory in IIS FTP) and only from a very limited pool of IPs to ensure that even if the details are disclosed, they are useless to any other user. In the ACP, the account is also usually disabled as well to ensure that the ACP details are useless if compromised too.

You're essentially asking them to fix your issue with both hands tied behind their back. The fact that they try and help you at all under those circumstances is nothing short of miraculous - with most of the enterprise vendors I have to work with, if the answer to "let's do a WebEx and we'll look at your system" is "no", then they simply outright refuse support. Just to point out as well, according to the standards of service (Terms of Sale) IPS has the right to refuse support if you won't provide access as well.

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Let me have the hope that one day IPS will be the big company with its own big number of testers who has the ability to test everything on their own computers before they sell something in 100,000 number of copies. Lindy was providing the example with the vehicle at the beginning. So, Toyota company withdraws all broken cars if there is the serious bug. And the customers do not need to provide the access to their private garages to repair it by the means of thousands unknown people inside. But this is the big vendor. Let us hope we will have the stable version of IPB soon. Otherwise the world will stop! :smile:

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You should also note that there is no such thing as a 100% bug free software.

That being said, if you have an issue/problem etc with your board and you would like help to fix it then you will have to provide the forum, ftp and server log in details to whomever it is that you want to fix those problems. Otherwise there is no way for that person to fix the issue.

If you are uncomfortable with sharing those infos with anyone, the only solution would be to learn stuff and fix all the issues yourself.

My advice, if I may, do not make such a big deal out of this. And as mentioned above, provide only limited and temp info which you can delete them afterwards after the work has been done. Or hire a third party that you are more comfortably regarding trusting. But which way you cut it, as I already mentioned above, you will have to provide log in details for someone to fix issues in your forum, be that Ips staff or some other third party tech person/s.

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Ivan,

We would not do anything to hurt you. Please don't take it this way.

Lindy's example does not equal the repair tech having access to your private garage at your residence, It equaled the ability of the tech to get under the hood of the vehicle to fix the engine.

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"open your hood, disconnect the battery cable, stick a 12mm ratchet and socket on the belt tensioner, apply pressure and remove belt. Loosen and remove the two supporting bolts holding the alternator to the bracket on the block. Remove alternator...." etc.

Please don't stop now as I have just removed the alternator. (w00t)

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