reCAPTCHA Issue with younger students

Amy Villa
Amy Villa
Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Boomerang (2021)
in Blackbaud Learning Management System™

Are there other schools using BBID with the Sign in with Google option that are experiencing reCAPTCHA messages when signing in?

We are PreK-12 and our 7th-12th grade students have access to email so a reCAPTCHA email is not a hindrance, although a brief interruption to learning. Our biggest issue we have is our 5th and 6th-grade students use myschoolapp throughout the day to check assignments, grades, conduct, schedules, messages and expectations but many keep getting the reCAPTCHA message which prevents them from logging in because the reCAPTCHA code is emailed and they don't have email accounts activated.

Chatted with tech support and the solution was to SSO with Google. The issue is we have been in school for over a month and have about 2,800 users and we do not want to make a change at this point and risk access issues with 7th-12th graders.

Does anyone else with this issue?

Blackbaud has said they cannot make any changes for us and that it is “hard coded”.

What is triggering the reCAPTCHA in the first place? All of this is happening on our campus. Why couldn't they collect our Public IP info and not flag our students who are clearly our students?

Comments

  • Nancy Stutsman
    Nancy Stutsman
    Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Amy Villa
    Hi, Amy. This won't be of any assistance to you, but we had terrible reCAPTCHA issues as well the first time a student attempted to sign in. We are SSO with Azure. We finally had an assistant log all of the 1st through 4th grade students in, so she could sit there and repeatedly reattempt the login (there is no code sent, of course, with SSO, but it still popped up the reCAPTCHA). Once the student's BBID was activated, it has not been an issue.

    I hope Blackbaud can adjust for younger students. We hoped to use Clever and Badges for them, but Clever has its own issues, so there does not seem to be a good solution now.

  • Susan Ott
    Susan Ott
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Amy Villa I can tell you that SSO with Google does not solve the problem. We have the same issue. Our 4th and 5th graders login but do not have email until 6th grade. Our “solution” at the beginning of school was to turn on their email until they signed in for the first time so they could access the code, then turn it off. It wasn't ideal but it worked. So far, we've not had any more issues. What we don't know is if the reCAPTCHA happened because it was the first time they were logging in and the SSO with Google will now keep it from happening or if it will continue to pop up periodically. Our 4th graders don't log in as often as the other students so it will be interesting to see what happens as the school year progresses. It seems BB did not think this through very well. If they are going to use a security tool like reCAPTCHA, why not have it do one of the other options like checking the box that we're not a robot or clicking all the boxes that have a stop sign like so many other websites do.

  • Bryan Lorenzo
    Bryan Lorenzo Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Susan Ott there is a way to bypass reCAPTCHA when using SSO, please take a look at the following reCAPTCHA FAQ page.

  • Bryan Lorenzo
    Bryan Lorenzo Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Amy Villa, if your school had a narrow IP range on campus and a large number of users are entering their password incorrectly, etc reCAPTCHA suspects that traffic is from a bot. The best route is to set up SSO for your employees and students. For troubleshooting details, see the reCAPTCHA FAQ.

  • Susan Ott
    Susan Ott
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Bryan Lorenzo we already tried that. We followed it exactly and it did not work for us. Even reached out to Support with questions, followed the advice, and still no luck.

  • Jessi Walters
    Jessi Walters Blackbaud Employee
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Amy Villa and all in this thread,

    I wanted to give you an update. The Blackbaud ID team recently made a change to help our schools bypass reCAPTCHA. Previously, even schools on SSO were landing on the BBID sign in page and were subject to those algorithms and potential traffic throttling/blocking. As of Friday, 9/23 users on SSO are automatically sent around reCAPTCHA and to your identity provider to authenticate. The SSO URL redirect parameter is no longer needed to bypass reCAPTCHA with BBID.** This workaround is one of many advantages gained by establishing SSO if at all possible.

    **I can't speak to whether reCAPTCHA affects your Identity Providers or not, but at least on the BBID side, it should no longer be an issue.

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