Support » Plugin: Professional Social Sharing Buttons, Icons & Related Posts - Shareaholic » I have access to EVERYONES Shareaholic account – want to fix that?

  • Resolved keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)


    So today I want to fix an issue in MY website in the Shareaholic plugin, but of course I can’t just fix it within the plugin – for some reason I have to go to a stupid website and play around with options that don’t make sense. However, if I login to a clients site I don’t have to do that because I didn’t activate that feature.

    But WORSE YET! I have to deal with every persons Shareaholic account on the planet. Or at least all those where I may have logged in to tweak a setting on their website or if they have ever used my laptop to login to their website, I now have access to their Shareaholic account.

    WHY? Why can’t I just have the same options as everyone else?
    And if the people I’ve helped or have used my laptop, update to the “Online Feature” do they have access to MY Shareaholic??

    WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING?

    HOW DO I DETACH YOUR ONLINE VERSION OF Shareaholic???
    I’m so sick of it. Just give me the basic plugin like everyone else. I’ll login to each account when I need to change something.

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/shareaholic/

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • Hi @keeperbay,

    Thanks for reaching out to us! And sorry for the huge confusion.

    When you log into a client’s Shareaholic plugin on WordPress and then visit Shareaholic.com, it auto-populates the settings to your Shareaholic.com account (if you’re logged in as yourself and not your client’s account). No worries! There’s a solution to fix this.

    I went into your Shareaholic.com account and saw the list of domains from the Site Tools page. You’re in luck- the entire planet is not on your Shareaholic account, so this will be much easier to resolve! 🙂 I’m assuming the sites that are listed are your client’s websites, including yours at the bottom (stuckathomemom.com).

    First, you will need to remove the websites that you do not want your personal Shareaholic.com account to be associated with. You can easily do this by clicking individually on the “Settings” button at the top right of each website listed. You’ll see an “X” for delete; click that.

    Once you’ve done that, if your client has a their own Shareaholic.com account and would like for their plugin settings to be populated into their account, please follow these steps:

    1.) First, you need to make sure you are logged out of of Shareaholic.com. This ensures that you are connecting the plugin to the correct account.

    2.) Go into your client’s Shareaholic App Manager (via WordPress).

    3.) From there, you will see a green button at the top right that reads “Unlock More Features, for free”. Here’s a helpful screenshot of what you’re looking for. Click that button. It will prompt you to sign-in or sign up. MAKE SURE TO SIGN-IN USING YOUR CLIENT’S SHAREAHOLIC ACCOUNT. This should auto-populate the plugin settings into their Shareaholic.com account.

    You may need to repeat these instructions for every client that has a Shareaholic.com account.

    If you have any questions or need assistance with this, please let me know. I’m happy to guide you through this.

    Thanks! 🙂
    Mary Anne

    Thread Starter keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)

    Once I was in there I found a whole lot of issues.

    1. some of my clients have sold their sites, I no longer have access to their websites. The people who purchased those sites are not going to be very happy that they now have to pay me $80 an hour to remove my access that I didn’t want, didn’t ask for and didn’t enable.

    2. if people don’t use your web access they don’t know you have set the Affiliate feature to enabled. So if they don’t have a disclaimer on the top of every post of their website disclosing that there are affiliate links within the page they are violating FTC regulations. These are the same regulations that the Shareaholic Help post links to so you should be able to find it. (This service is enabled by default, and no new code is required.)
    I have been waiting for your response before contacting the FTC with this violation. Obviously this isn’t a bug and you are purposely misleading people.

    3. Amazon doesn’t allow people in some states like mine to use their affiliate links because of our tax code. By putting Amazon affiliate links within the code you are violating Amazon policy. Per Amazon policy if you violate the TOS they will terminate your account and remove all funds. Do you realize the amount of taxes you have to pay to a state like mine if you have your affiliate links on my blog?

    And there are more issues and violations, I have posts ready to go titled 8 Reasons You Don’t Want to Use Shareaholic & How Shareaholic is Causing you to Break the Law.

    I never gave you permission to put Amazon or any other links within my blog, I have spoken with many of my current clients they were not aware that it was your policy.

    I like the look of the Shareaholic buttons, but I have 98 current clients who won’t be using them soon and I will do my best to make sure no one else uses Shareaholic ever again.

    Hi @keeperbay,

    Thanks for the feedback! We noticed your ticket in Zendesk and have addressed your comments from there. 🙂

    Thank you!

    Seriously? Just because I work on a client’s site it can get associated with MY account? That’s ridiculous and unprofessional!

    Hi Pamela,

    So sorry for the confusion! You can link the WP plugin to your Shareaholic account by clicking the “Unlock more features, for free” button. Most of our users only have one Shareaholic account, so the plugin will link to the account they are currently logged into.

    If you manage multiple sites (for your clients via WordPress), however, and then visit the Shareaholic.com site logged-in as yourself, their plugin settings will automatically populate into your account. But it’s super easy to remove! Just click “Settings” from the Site Tools page, and then click “X” to delete.

    The way to ensure that the plugin settings gets populated to the correct account is to completely log-out of Shareaholic.com, go to WordPress > Shareaholic > App Manager, and click the “Unlock More Features, for free” button. This will prompt you to sign-in to the Shareaholic.com account that you would like the plugin to be associated with.

    Let me know if you have any questions about this! Happy to help. 🙂

    Cheers,
    Mary Anne <3

    Hi, Mary Anne,

    Yes, I now thoroughly understand how this works – and it’s BAD for business. Once I’ve worked on someone’s site I should not have control over anything, nor should I see their account. It is ILLOGICAL that one should have to LOG OUT of shareaholic.com in order to ensure this doesn’t happen.

    Sorry, but “super easy to remove” doesn’t cut it. I had to contact my clients today and tell them this happened. That’s transparency. They are all now ditching the plugin.

    Plugin Author Shareaholic

    (@shareaholic)

    Hi @pamelahazelton

    To clarify, the only thing that you see in YOUR dashboard is the site profile and not someone else’ (ex. your clients) Shareaholic account. You’re still very much in your own account and your details are private to you.

    Once you’ve done setting up the site for a client, as Mary Anne indicated, you can remove the site profile from your account and then let your client claim it if they wish to. Many consultants prefer to keep the site linked to their own profile as they’re the ones that continue to maintain the site even after the initial setup — it’s a personal / situational preference.

    We’re a small team trying very hard to address lots of different scenarios and use cases. We believe in transparency and being responsive too, and practice it every chance we get. But we’re human and can make mistakes. That said, we hear you. Yes – we could have made the process clearer and it can be easier — “Team Access” for site profiles will be coming soon.

    Dear “Shareaholic Member”:

    Actually, you’re incorrect. Even right now I can see three other sites. I can toggle switches and they will have effect.

    It doesn’t matter what consultants “prefer” – this actually happened without MY knowledge, and without my client’s knowledge. Just because I configure something within someone’s WordPress admin, I should not outright have access to those tools.

    If you believe in Transparency, why didn’t you send out a bulk email to users explaining 1) The ad placements you launched in the post-share box and 2) Affiliate Linking. If you believe in transparency, why did you automatically turn a feature ON? Because it’s easier? I agree that plenty of users would want a way to monetize that required no work on their part, but majority doesn’t win here. You violated trust.

    Feel free to read the post at my own site. You cost me time and you cost me money – because you decided that *I* would want you to rewrite my links.

    Thread Starter keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)

    You may only see Your controls in Your Dashboard, BUT on the “unlocked” site dashboard you DO see other peoples Shareaholic accounts.

    Not only did I see all the accounts, I could make changes to those accounts.
    Just as soon as you “Unlock” those options on your account you will have access to all the accounts where you have simply installed the plugin (NOT unlocked the options, just have the plugin installed.)

    BUT That is just the tip of the iceberg.
    Options are enabled that can cause bloggers and site owners to violate FTC regulations. Unless someone “unlocks” the ‘free options’ they won’t know that ads may be showing on their websites. However, if their account is inadvertently attached to yours you have full control. You can do whatever you want to their Shareaholic options and they will be unaware of what you’re doing. If your site is hacked – THEIR Site can be affected.

    Right now I’m looking into a hacking threat – if my site was hacked, how easy would it be to hack one of my clients accounts because of Shareholic – so far it looks pretty easy.

    Make no mistake, you Need to REMOVE the Shareaholic plugin from your site and All client websites.

    Plugin Author Shareaholic

    (@shareaholic)

    @pamelahazelton

    Even right now I can see three other sites. I can toggle switches and they will have effect.

    A “site profile” and an “account” are logically separate. You can see those site profiles because you’ve claimed them (unknowingly). Once you unclaim them, you won’t have access to them again, unless you claim them again.

    Also, see my note reg. team access. You’ll soon be able to share a “site profile” across many shareaholic accounts if you wish to, which should hopefully address your use-case. If it won’t, would love your input on how best solve for this.

    If you believe in Transparency, why didn’t you send out a bulk email to users explaining 1) The ad placements you launched in the post-share box and 2) Affiliate Linking.

    We SO agree and we absolutely did… maybe this is where the disconnect is?

    Do you have an email address linked with your Shareaholic account? — and have you given us permission to email you with updates? This is defaulted to yes when you sign up, maybe you changed it? Maybe the email made it to your spam box?

    Our intention was never to violate your trust. The intention was to help monetize outbound links for you which you would not have been monetized otherwise ie. it’s “found money” or extra income for you. Also, if you manually link to something with your own affiliate link, our intention is to leave the link untouched. This obviously wasn’t the case for you.

    I sincerely apologize for the heartache caused. It was certainly not our intention…!

    Thread Starter keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)

    A “site profile” and an “account” are logically separate. You can see those site profiles because you’ve claimed them (unknowingly). Once you unclaim them, you won’t have access to them again, unless you claim them again.

    Are you not getting it? – It’s the UNKNOWINGLY that’s the problem.
    If clients start poking around their Shareaholic account they have access to MY SITE AND ALL OF MY CLIENTS SITES! All of Them!

    What you have done is nothing short of Stupid! Do you understand? Clients have access to other clients websites and that’s just where it starts.

    Thread Starter keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)

    The intention was to help monetize outbound links for you which you would not have been monetized otherwise ie. it’s “found money” or extra income for you.

    BULL! The intent was to monetize your own pockets. You HID the options to turn it off. If your intent was to help us you would have put the options Front and Center and made them obvious. How Stupid do you think we are?

    Email plugins [at] wordpress [dot] org to see through a permanent ban on this plugin. This is not the first offense.

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Side note: @technicblu While you are correct that all such plugin problems should go to that email address, please don’t encourage multiple people to email about the same thing.

    It’s not reality TV and plugin’s are not voted off of the island. 😉

    I’m not part of that team but I do know that the (overworked!) plugin team reads all the emails and will look into allegations of violating the guidelines. If they’re found to be breaking the rules then it will be handled.

    That might not mean a “permanent ban on this plugin” and that team may not even find a violations. You really need to be patient and let that review work it’s way out.

    Thread Starter keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)

    Thank you @technicblu I shall do that.
    I also did a detailed warning post on the topic and I will do another and simplify it for newbies.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • The topic ‘I have access to EVERYONES Shareaholic account – want to fix that?’ is closed to new replies.