I recently read a great blog post by a fellow name Bob Jenkins – also known as the Bob the Teacher.  He tells a great story on why you should never rent office space from an employee and how it relates to hiring a web designer or webmaster and how they setup access to your domain name and webhosting account.

You can tell from the comments how many people have had issues of the same sort and how it affected them.  And then there is the other side from webmasters and why they have this preference.

All good points, however based on personal experience I am one who recommends and prefers when working for clients that accounts get opened and setup in their name, not mine. In most cases you can add admin access as well.

Working as a virtual assistant for my clients entails a lot of trust because it requires in most cases to have password access to a myriad of their accounts. This is the norm; access to email, social media, newsletter system, website, blog and many more….however, when our contract is complete or the client and I decide to part ways I always recommend they also go and change their passwords and any assigned admin access.  This can be a royal pain for the client, but really it is for their protection as well as mine (*Tip* I use Roboform to store and update my passwords – saves tons of time).

As Bob mentioned in his blog post, having password access is the same as having the key and alarm code to your brick and mortar store.  If someone is no longer working there – would you allow them to keep a key to come and go when they please?  Not likely. Too much is at stake – your business name, reputation not to mention the contents in the store. The same goes for your website and other accounts they have access to; your business name is your domain name, your reputation and contents of your store are dependent upon the content on your webpages, your newsletter has content and even access to email all your contacts.  These are all part of your online store and should be treated with the same respect for security.

This is not meant to say that your virtual assistant or anyone else hired to work for you, anyone with password access – will go and ruin your reputation at any chance;  it is meant to make you realize that having access is a risk. A risk you need to take seriously and protect as you would the key to your store.

When starting out, start right and have control of the online parts of your business that you will ultimately need to have ownership and control of.  If your accounts are not setup in your name then now is the time to question the setup and change it – while you are still working with the other party.

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