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Can the moderators of a bulletin board get into your PC?

I belong to a bulletin board where a member stated that he was unable to post pics from his PC to the thread he had started. One of the moderators asked if he wanted him (the moderator) to do it?



I know the mods can read your IP address and such but wondered just how much access do they have to your computer.

Public Comments

1. They do not have access to your pc.
   
   
   
   He probably meant that if the picture was sent to him, he could post it. Or if the picture was hosted on a website, then he could post the picture himself.
   
   
   
   You are right that moderators can see your ip address, and they may be able to see what access on their site but they cannot access files on your computer without you knowing without a doubt they are.
2. He probably sent the pics to the mod by email, then the mod posted them.
   
   
   
   But back to the question: If he had invited the mod, by
   
   remote assistance, or the mod had sent a file that infected him, then the mod could get control.
3. In general, the moderator wouldn't have any access to your computer but that assumes you've done everything you should to protect yourself.
   
   
   
   Users often don't protect themselves well because of ignorance, carelessness or other User Error.
   
   
   
   Examples of some common mistakes which would permit a remote User to reach into your computer
   
   - The usual "trojans through email" and so on.
   
   - Not patching your machine sufficiently so malware embedded in the website can exploit your vulnerability
   
   - Humans don't like to remember zillions of passwords for everything and will use the same passoword in a number of places. If the username/password for the bulletin board is the same as for some account on your machine... You guessed it, he'll have identified your machine <and> have your credentials.
   
   - If you don't have a Firewall installed blocking everything it should
   
   - If you have Services running on your machine that are unnecessary and exposed, minimally those Services might be used by the remote user and worse could be a stepping stone to compromise.
   
   
   
   It's a wild and wooly world of the Internet, and although a Moderator shouldn't be able to get into your computer, he might.
4. Web pages are static pieces of information transferred from a host running apache or IIS.
   
   
   
   Apache and IIS by themselves are connectionless to any client (pc's) that ask for their pages and need to serve each page one at a time.
   
   
   
   However, if there is malicious code in the website the page can load infected software, trojans, and other attacks to your computer to gain control.
   
   
   
   If the site is legit (not pirated cracks, serial, application, movie, or music) and from a trusted company I doubt they will load anything without telling you first.
   
   
   
   Beware of loading ActiveX and Java applications. The code might do more than what you think if the site is not reliable.
   
   
   
   Cheers!