Hi all,
Thank you for your patience. Please be assured we have taken your concerns very seriously and have looked into the issues you have raised thoroughly so we can give the most accurate and up to date answer.
MYA Space utilises the open source BuddyPress platform which is built in PHP and MySQL. This lets our developers stay at the cutting edge of trends and allows us to access a wide range of plugins and enhancements available for the BuddyPress platform. This platform is one of the most popular and is used worldwide.
BuddyPress was chosen for its flexibility and ability to expand as the number of members grew. We’ve worked closely with our hosting company that manages our webservers to enhance the MYA Space experience and have invested in more bandwidth, better connectivity as well as a separate server that solely houses the MYA Space database.
As part of a continued project, it is our intention to upgrade MYA Space’s features and usability by adding new functionality and improving user experience. We did this in a major way in the latter half of 2011 by adding picture sharing. While questions have arisen in the past regarding Google images and privacy of the photos, recently there have been more questions regarding privacy and acces to the photos that need to be answered.
At MYA we have one senior female member of the business who has access to all pictures as an administrator. It is a requirement that someone at MYA must have this access as if the legality of any pictures that are held on our server is brought into question we must be able to see and remove them. As of yet we have not needed to access the photos in this way.
The MYA moderator is female, the moderator has moderator access which allows us to moderate posts, but not to see people’s private pictures unless we are friends with them and they have stated so in their privacy settings. MYA Space gives you total control over your friendship settings.
If a male developer needs to work on the forum they are granted access via the main admin account for a temporary period and any development work takes place in an office with female members present. Further the administrator account is only accessed on MYA approved premises.
Regarding potential access to the admin section of MYA Space by non-authorised members, we can confirm that this is not possible for standard forum users. What may seem like the admin section of MYA Space is actually the standard WordPress admin panel. This is because BuddyPress supports the feature of individual blogs although this is currently not active at the moment. Within that section you are able to improve the speed the admin panel loads as well as edit parts of your profile.
Private messages exist as a way of one to one communication between two MYA Space members. The MYA Moderator makes extensive use of this feature to communicate privately with members answering questions and concerns. We would like to confirm that we have never accessed Private Messages.
Another question involved MYA Space and confidentiality. MYA Space is a part of MYA Cosmetic Surgery and helps MYA patients on their cosmetic surgery journey. Any patient information is kept confidential within MYA. Part of why it exists is so that we can hear feedback from patients and continually work to improve the level of service that we provide. We also want to ensure that our patients have the best possible clinical results and therefore if any clinical issues are raised this may be shared with your clinic to ensure that they provide up to date and relevant care. It is important that once we are put on notice any information that can affect the quality of your care may be used to keep a complete and true record of your health.
We hope this provides an insight into how MYA Space is built, moderated and developed.
Please be aware this policy may change from time to time and we will do our best to keep you updated.
Posted by MYA Moderator following technical input from several sources.
