What’s happening?

Technology Services will deactivate accounts belonging to people that are no longer eligible for the U of I Box service. Eligibility for U of I Box is extended to all current faculty, staff, students, recent alums, sponsored accounts, and affiliates. If you are currently enrolled as a student, currently employed by the university, or currently working as an affiliate of the University, then your account will not be affected. Each campus will devise its own processes for dealing with accounts and processes depicted here are relevant for the Urbana campus.

When is it happening?

Account deactivations will start June 12, 2023. Due to the number of affected accounts, the service team will be batching the deactivations and expect to complete them in December 2023. In following years, account deactivations will have happen after periodic service reviews, happening once a year. 

How does this affect me?

For the overwhelming majority of users, there should be no impact at all. Only accounts that have been found to be ineligible for service will be affected. 

What about the data in those deactivated accounts?

There is a chance that you are collaborating on a file that is owned by an account that will be deactivated. To protect anyone from accidental data loss, we will be using a multi-step process.

1. The service team will identify the accounts that are no longer eligible for service based on their current account status as shown in Banner.
2. An email will be sent to the identified accounts and a notice will be shared with IT pros about the upcoming deactivations.
3. The data belonging to those accounts will be flagged with a visual warning message.
4. Thirty days after the notification message and application of the visual warning message, the account will be deactivated. When the account is deactivated, the owner and any collaborators will lose access to it.
5. The service team will hold the data for 6 months.
6. Six months after the data hold starts, that data will be purged from the system and it will no longer be recoverable.

If you see any data with a visual warning message, you should take action to ensure the data is not lost. That could be 

• working with the data owner to change ownership,
• copying the data to another location, not owned by the soon to be deactivated account, or
• working with your local IT support team to have the data moved to a Box team folder.

What about the visual warning messages?

The Box support team will be adding tags and descriptive messages to the data belonging to accounts that are going to be deactivated. The warning messages will appear approximately 30 days before the account is deactivated and appear in different ways. A short URL has been created to go to the Marked for Deletion Tag: https://go.illinois.edu/BoxMFD 

The visual warning tag applied to a folder


The visual warning in the folder description



The visual warning in the Details pane


The visual warning in the search results

These message are only present in the Web interface and do not show in Box Drive. 

If you are working in Box and come across one of these visual warnings, please understand that the file/folder currently belongs to an account that will be deactivated. Use these visual warnings to understand that your access will be lost when the account is deactivated. Please take the time to make arrangements that will allow you continued access.

Frequently asked Questions:

Q: Why is this happening now? 

A: A recent service review showed that some accounts belonging to ineligible people had not been properly deactivated. We are remediating that issue. 

Q: How will I know if I am affected? 

A: We are only deactivating accounts belonging to people with no current affiliation with the university. If you are an employee of the campus, enrolled as a student, or working as an affiliate, you will not be affected. We will be sending out emails to all accounts (using last known email addresses) prior to account deactivation. 

Q: How are you determining eligibility? 

A: We are checking your status in Banner to see if you have an active affiliation with the campus. 

Q: What if I’m going to be deactivated, but I think my account should remain active? 

A: You will need to contact the department you work with or the registrar’s office to have your status updated in Banner.

Q: What should I do if I am notified that my account will be deactivated? 

A: You should copy out any personal data and transfer ownership of any data that may be needed by others. We've created a knowledgebase article with advice for migrating your data out of Box.

Q: What happens to data belonging to deactivated accounts? 

A: First will we flag the data indicating that the account owning the data is going to be deactivated. That flag will be present for 30 days. After those 30 days, we will deactivate the account owning the deactivated data. The data will be inaccessible for the account owner and any collaborators. Once the account is deactivated, the data will be held for 6 months and recoverable by the Box support team. After holding the data, it will be purged from the system. 

Q: Will these account deactivations impact all data stored in Box? 

A: No, it will on affect data owned by ineligible accounts. Data owned by eligible accounts will be unaffected. Data stored in Box Team folders will be unaffected. Data stored in Box Health Data Folders will be unaffected. 

Q: How can tell if data that I'm using belongs to an account that will be deactivated? 

A: We are using the Tags feature in Box to apply a visual indicator that the data is Marked for Deletion. When using the web client you can search for this tag and it will show any data that you collaborate on that have been marked. 

What if I have questions?

For most issues, if you have questions please reach out to your department's IT support team. They have been updated on these changes and can help you manage your data. Additionally, you can contact the Technology Services Help Desk via email at consult@illinois.edu or on the web at https://help.illinois.edu with any questions.