Changes to your REV23 ID

Hello! We wanted to alert you to future updates coming soon to REV23 concerning the security of your account and how these changes affect you and our software.

TLDR; We’re migrating REV23 ID usernames/passwords to a new platform which affects how you log onto REV23.com and REV23 Desktop for software activation. You will have 12 months to update to a version that supports these changes before our old systems are shut down.

Update 6 (9/23/2020): Our old licensing servers have been shut down as of September 23, 2020 and the App Password feature has been removed. This completes the REV23 ID migration.

Update 5: (8/1/2020) Our old licensing servers will be shut down on August 31, 2020. Versions of REV23 Desktop older than v18.1 will no longer be able to activate. REV23 Desktop v18.1 has been in service since May 2018, this far exceeds our typical support window of old versions. Services that will be shut down in older versions are: Software licensing and activation, Reset Administrator user password (from Control Panel), Error reporting.

Update 4 (8/5/2019): When attempting to activate, you may encounter an error which says, “Could not find a license to activate for REV23 Desktop.” This occurred because, in previous versions of REV23 Desktop, we did not pay attention to whether you were activating a Main PC or Add-On PC and would grab the first available license that was found on your account, and in some cases, the Main PC activated the Add-On PC license and vice versa. Due to abuse of this, we’ve changed our licensing requirements and we now ensure you activate the proper license for the installed software. To fix this, go to your Licenses and Unlock your licenses and attempt the activation again. Unlocking is only available for subscription based licenses, so if you do not see this option, please email us at support@rev23.com and we will unlock for you.

Update 3 (8/5/2019): Attempting to log out of your REV23 ID in the software activation window will cause an error if you're not using a Windows Administrator account. This will be addressed in an update later this week or next week. If you need to login to a different account on this screen, either sign onto a Windows account with Administrator privileges, or right click the REV23 Desktop icon and select "Run as Administrator."

Update 2 (8/5/2019): Users on Windows 7 may receive "An error occurred while sending the request" message when attempting to activate. To fix this, download this file, save it, and double click to run. You will be prompted to add the information to your registry, say 'Yes', and that should resolve the issue. It's important to note that v18.1 is the last version of REV23 Desktop that will support Windows 7.

Update (8/5/2019): This was launched on August 5th, 2019 at 7PM MST and REV23 Desktop v18.1.5 was released. Please bear with us while we work through any issues.

What’s Happening?

As we prepare for the next chapter of REV23 we’ve had to lift the hood and tweak pretty much everything that makes our system tick. While you’re used to just seeing REV23 Desktop on your Windows PC, there an even larger system and infrastructure hard at work behind the scenes. At the core of everything is your REV23 ID, the account you use to sign into this website, comment on blog posts, order products, and activate your software licenses, etc... Currently, your username and password are stored in our custom-built customer relationship manager (CRM) and content management system (CMS) that we call XRMS.

While we used decent enough security techniques at the time, our password hashing algorithm is rather outdated, and we lacked some key technology required to easily support your REV23 ID on other platforms, such as an iOS or Android app.

We’ve been working to migrate user identities to a third-party service which handles the authentication and authorization of your REV23 ID, so this data (i.e. your passwords) will no longer be the responsibility of REV23. Soon, we will launch an update to REV23 Desktop and REV23.com simultaneously to support this new flow, and while we’ve done a lot of work to make this as seamless as possible for you, there are some things to know.

Account Migration

First, when this update is released you will need to migrate your account. How you ask? Just log onto REV23.com with your existing email address and password and your account will automatically be migrated! It’s also important to note that some settings, 2FA (two-factor-authentication) are not currently enabled with REV23 but will be in a later update, social logins (Facebook, Google, etc...) have been removed and are no longer supported.

Next, areas where you use your REV23 ID in our Desktop software needed to be updated as well. When we need you to log on with your REV23 ID, you’ll now see a small browser window pop up for you to sign in. These areas include:

• Activating/validating a software license/subscription.
• Resetting the administrator user password.

Ok, great, migrating your account is easy enough. However, here’s what we know after ten years of working with our users: First, most people don’t read emails, blog posts or any kind of communication. Second, not everyone updates their software right away. So how do we deal with older software versions? Introducing your App Password.

App Passwords

We have repurposed your existing REV23 password to an App Password, which only serves one purpose: to interact with your REV23 ID from older versions of our software. By default, your app password is your REV23 ID password from before the migration. If you forget this password, you’ll be able to regenerate a new app password from your account settings.

App Passwords have been removed with the shut down of the licensing servers in Fall 2020.

Service deprecation

Generally, we only support Desktop versions up to 18-months old. REV23 Desktop v18.1 is already greater than 12-months old and all of these changes are being released in an 18.1.5 update, extending the life of 18.1 even further. Later this year, or early next year, older versions of some services will be have been shut down and the App Password will be removed, which will affect all versions of Tattoo Management Studio, as well as REV23 Desktop v17.1. These services include:

• Software licensing and activation
• Reset Administrator user password (from Control Panel)
• Error reporting

Because of this eventual service deprecation, it would be a good idea to update to 18.1.5 soon after it’s available to avoid disruptions in any of these services and receive the most seamless experience with your REV23 ID as possible.

Timeline

We don't have a release date on this yet other than "soon." All of this work is happening now (and has been for a few weeks) and will be ready when it's ready, but we wanted to start communicating these changes before going live.

This process has been completed in its entirety.

Conclusion

I know there is a lot of tech mumbo-jumbo in this blog post, so I appreciate those of you that hung in there and got to the end. There was one juicy bit of information in this post for those paying attention, and I’m sure that’s right where the questions will go. I can’t say anything additional now, but rest assured, we’ll be talking more about this soon.