Possible issue: Blackbaud using Redacted.com domain for BBIDs

Erin Caprielian

Per KB article 205106, if users have not signed in for two years, Blackbaud is replacing their Email address with redacted[numeric string]@redacted .com, where the 14 digit numeric string indicates the date and time the user was redacted [YYYYMMDDHHMMSS].

However, it appears that Redacted.com was an actual registered domain; if you go to that website, there is a message from Redacted, Inc. Even though the company no longer appears active, couldn't there be issues if someone else registers that domain? It might be better for Blackbaud to use a domain like example.com which has been reserved (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com ). Any thoughts on this?

Brian Gray

There was an announcement about this from Blackbaud in the What's New blog post for Sept 9:

It said:

If a user has no activity for 395 days and an admin hasn’t re-enabled them in the last 30 days, then their account is automatically marked inactive for security purposes, and their username is disabled. To avoid this, a user should have at least one of these actions:

• log in,
• be invited to Blackbaud ID,
• connect to Blackbaud ID,
• be manually enabled.

When a user’s account is disabled, a message indicating that they were “Inactivated by the system on <date/time>” appears on their Core user profile, under Access. Users with disabled accounts should contact your school so a platform manager can re-enable them.

Erin Caprielian

Hi Brian - Thanks for your reply. I did see that announcement and also cited the Knowledgebase Article referencing it. My question is specifically on the domain that Blackbaud chose to use (redacted.com) instead of a standard testing email domain such as example.com. If redacted.com was used by a company previously and isn't reserved for testing, then isn't it possible someone could reserve it again?

Brian Gray

Eric - the text of your first message didn't appear until after I replied. I was going off the subject line only.

You're right that redacted.com is an odd choice, but there's probably not much we can do but deal with it for now and wait for it to break something.

Erin Caprielian

For reference, here is a screenshot from one of the pages on redacted.com:

Kerry Campbell

Hi, Product Manager for Blackbaud ID here 👋

To reduce confusion, we are reviewing how the email is displayed after a user has been redacted.

Thanks for the feedback.!

Erin Caprielian

@Kerry Campbell Thank you Kerry! I just saw today's post from @Bryna Gleich about Blackbaud ID updates so hopefully this is being reviewed as part of the overall account updates for inactive users mentioned in her post.