Locked out of club website

Hello,
I've been the webmaster for our club's website for a number of years. Recently, without changing the password, I can no longer login as site administrator (though I can as a member). I receive the message "Club number or password is incorrect". Another person in our club has the admin password, though my understanding is that any changes to the password can only be authorised by the webmaster - ie. me.

A few weeks ago I did, as webmaster, receive emails from server@toastmastersclubs.org asking me if I wanted to change the password, and including a link to do this. As, I did not request, this, nor did I want to authorize this, I ignored the email. If I try to use these links, they do not activate anything, so it seems that the password has been reset by a non-authorized person. He also cannot login.

So, my question is:

1. Can you reset the password for me please?
2. Is it possible that someone has illegally hacked into our website, by using one of the freely available password generators/crackers? (I thought our password was a reasonably difficult one.)
3. Do you proved protection to the freetoast websites by disallowing multiple password attempts by crackers?

Hope you can help. Thanks in advance,

Paul Kravchenko

According to our records, you are not the currently listed website admin for club number 7851... Regardless of whether you were in fact the admin, we go by what is in our records in these situations... You need to keep this information accurate and up to date.

Admin Registration Info:

Club Number: 7851
Club Domain:
Club Alias: holroyd
Admin Name: Patrick Muraguri
Admin Email: [secret]Patrick.muraguri[/secret]@nswbc.com.au
Registration Date: 2011-09-15 06:35:08

If this is incorrect, please submit a change form: www.toastmastersclubs.org/change

Thanks for the information Steve,
I must say I'm dumbfounded - as the long-term website administrator, I cannot understand how another officer could have changed the password without my knowledge - and become the new website administrator. My understanding is that the registered website administrator (who was me for a number of years) is the only one who can authorize someone else to be the website administrator. As I did not authorize the change, I must question how was this possible?

Paul Kravchenko

The change could have been approved by whoever had the contact email address in Find a Club ... that is another possibility.

If that is true, then I suggest that this is a serious flaw - the VPM should not have automatic rights to being the website administrator. I have not seen any information supporting this as a policy on freetoasthost. Effectively, a person without authorisation from myself, or our executive, has tried to login as website admin - receive the message that an email would be sent to him whereby he could change the website password - without reference to (and knowledge of) the original website admin....

lastivka wrote: If that is true, then I suggest that this is a serious flaw - the VPM should not have automatic rights to being the website administrator. I have not seen any information supporting this as a policy on freetoasthost. Effectively, a person without authorisation from myself, or our executive, has tried to login as website admin - receive the message that an email would be sent to him whereby he could change the website password - without reference to (and knowledge of) the original website admin....

The change form works like it works for very good reasons and I have no intention of changing it. We sometimes have club website admins that leave a club and disappear, so there *must* be an alternate to the (now gone) admin to approve admin changes so that clubs can gain control of their websites and assign admin rights to someone new.

In this scenario, I do not know what happened in your club and we do not get involved in internal club relations/politics, so I would advise to you talk to your club officers.