Druid

I'm working on a website for a client. The financial transaction is not complete and they want me to upload it to their domain so they can see it. However, I'm cautious of this as they could easily change the password on the admin account and I'm locked out of the box and they have the content for free. I don't think any of them have the technical know how to do that, but that's beside the point.

I am interested in a way to upload the content to their domain, but somehow disable or corrupte the site from outside of the domain if they refuse to complete the finanical portion of the transaction.

I thought about making the reference to the CSS file an external reference to the same file on another box outside of their domain, that could allow me to "disable" the site by removing the CSS file from the remote box.

I'm looking for other ideas also... suggestions would be appreciated.

grimpirate

You could take some screencaps of the content so that they can see the formatting and visual style of the website but not have its functionality.

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Daniel Everett

You have a contract with you client. It does not have to be written and so can just be verbal. All you have to make sure is that you complete you part of the contract(so finnish and deomstrate the system works). If they then refuse to pay you then go to a lawyer and sue them for your loss. As long as the software meets the specifiactions (that you should have set out at the start) and you completed it in time and to budget(so you have not breached the contract) they will have to pay. Unless there is some technical reason that there was never a contract or the contract has already been breached by either party you will be legaly ok.

Demonstrate the program working properly and get them to agree that it is what they wanted. If they then refuse to pay or claim it is not what was specified(and you believe it is to specification) then go to a lawyer and sue for breach of contract. Messing about with some system to stop the software from working if they dont pay will make you look unprofessional.

titaniumdecoy

If possible, ask them to meet with you. At the meeting, you can show them the website, and ask them to pay you.

Pizentios

Send em a bill. Get paid, then upload.

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big_k105

Or you could just have it setup on your own domain and have them visit it there to prove it works. Since more or less they are just looking for proof it will work before they pay you. But then again if you have a contract with them then it shouldn't matter either way since they are legally responsible to pay. So if you do have a contract then go ahead and upload to there server. But I would probably see if you can upload it to your server and then have a meeting to discuss the how it works and how it meets the specs.

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titaniumdecoy

It is very time-consuming and expensive to sue someone. If you attempt to sue that person without a written agreement, it will be all but impossible to prove your case. In addition, the bill from your lawyer will probably be more than the bill you sent your client.

Sane

The first rule to winning is making sure you always have all of the cards in your hands. Unless you want to bother getting a lawyer and sueing, which a lot of people can't be bothered to do... So, this is what I can suggest. It's a little nasty, but it gets the job done.

Hide inside one of the files the instructions to delete everything you gave them. These instructions could be triggered by specifying a certain $_GET variable, or using one of the fields that already exists on the website. Of course, it would have to be obfuscated and hidden well enough. But why would they check the files anyways?

That way, if they ever pull a wrong move, or even hesitate the scheduled time of payment (it has happened to me before, he used it to buy himself some time to get out), you pull out the big gun and delete it right away. You don't even say anything either, else they could quickly disable the server and get someone in there to spoon out the poison.

PS... You could get owned if the server's executing your script chroot'ed, which could limit the possibility of deleting files. However, if your script involves reading and writing data in the first place, then that couldn't be an issue.

Pizentios

sometimes doing the right thing isn't the cheapest solution. In my books proving my point (and doing business with integrity) is worth much more to me.

Then again, you could always just take their server down if they don't pay you. j/k

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Indigno

I like the idea of a kill switch embeded in the code. Also, since this is just a demo, you could make it so you don't have to access it at all, instead it will do it after a date (Say, in a few hours or a day) that way, you don't have to worry about being IP Blocked and unable to access the command. And you could make it really nasty to remove it by making a bunch of other parts of the system ask that little section for permission to go ahead.

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