Founder Accounts - Not Save?

Dear Forumotion Team,

I always was under the impression that the "founders account" of the creator of a forum is a "sacred" thing so to speak and that it would/should be impossible to loose it (apart from bad things happening like: being hacked, getting one's password stolen or trusting the wrong people). Subsequently a "transfer" of a founders account should only ever be possible with the explicit consent of the person who created the forum.

I'm beginning to think that this is not at all the case and would like to hear an official statement and why forumotion is handing over "founder accounts" to unauthorized people without checking with the forum's real founder/creator! There should - at the very least - be an e-mail warning system to prevent something like this from ever happening without the creator/founder knowing what's going on. 

In my humble opinion transfer of a founder's account without explicit consent of the creator shouldn't be possible in the first place (due to for example: privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications, intellectual property infringement,...).




Regards

Hello,

The founder account is always user 1. So when someone asks for a transfer of the founder account they're handing over their account to an individual.

Now Forumotion won't ever change the foundation email without consent of the founder. We always ask for the foundation email before we change anything as a from of identifying if someone is the founder.

So that is why Forumotion asks you to keep your foundation email secret as its a way of identifying who someone is.

For example say you want your foundation email changed. You'd fill out this form.

Case Number 5
- The e-mail address used to create the forum:
- The URL of the forum:
- A new e-mail address to be used as a foundation email:

Or you'd log into your forum utilities https://www.forumotion.com/utils and change it in there.

We also ask members when they create the forum to change their admin panel email to something different because the email they used to create the forum is also the ones that will appear in the admin panel for the founder account.

Forumotion does have checks/balances to ensure we don't have over the founder account to the wrong person but users must take responsibility by:

Keeping their founder email a secret
Not giving other users access to the founder account
Having a different email in the ACP.

Dear Derri,

thank you for your swift reply, giving an official statement.

The reason why I posted in the first place is that I happen to be the founder/creator of a forum that I created back in 2009 (on the 6. Oktober 2009 at 12:34 to be precise - so yes I still have the original forumotion creation e-mail safely stored away).  From it's creation day I've spent the gross of my free time working of that forum in one way or the other (html, CSS, graphics, texts,...) - but was forced to take a break a few months ago. Silly  me I thought everything was save and alright and nobody would be able to steal or destroy my work. I'd like to point out that nobody but myself had access to the highest security clearance and the "administration panel" - that was not an oversight but intended.

Now upon my return I lean that my founder account has been transferred - without me having been notified and without my explicit consent or me knowing anything about this - to someone else.

I can see that matters are different if a founder dies or if he/she decides to leave for good and decide to make their work over to someone else. But how can it be that I who didn't die, who didn't write over anything to anyone can be locked out of my own work (after all I'm the person who spent YEARS working on the forum) - come back and find someone had the "brilliant" idea to transfer the rights to somebody else without asking?!

I'm very disappointed and shocked that this could happen and that founders aren't more protected. In any case I really would like to have things restored as they should be.

Regards

---------
P.S.: I did try using the "forum utilities" but alas I can't log in anymore (probably due to the dispossession and the transfer that happened in my absence).

Hi,

Can you give me the forum address you're talking about please?

Sure, the address of my forum is:  http://19thcenturywbts.forumotion.com

(Should you need the creation e-mail or anything else as prove please let me know and I'll forward it to you per e-mail)

Yes,

Seeing your email address would be useful. Could you private message me it?

Sure thing -> PM with e-mail address sent!

Were you gone for 6 months and 1 day?