Introduction to Raven

Raven is a service used by some web sites that provide resources for the University of Cambridge, to identify people so that decisions (such as granting or denying access) can be made based on who that person is and on other information about them. Raven is provided by the University Computing Service, and uses standard Computing Service user identifiers (CRSid) and 'Raven passwords' to identify people. See Information for Webmasters to find out how web servers in the University can be configured to use Raven's services.

Some web sites using Raven are automatically available to all registered Raven users but others are available only to particular groups of people.

When a web site wants Raven to identify you, your browser will be automatically redirected to the central Raven server. The central server will prompt you for your CRSid and password. Assuming you enter them correctly, the Raven server will then redirect your browser back to the original web site and provide some information about you. Usually this will just be your CRSid, but for some sites additional information will be provided, such as your status in the University. You will always be warned before information is disclosed to a new web site.

Your password is only seen by the Raven server and is transmitted over 'secure http' which helps to protects it while it is travelling over the network. See How do I get a Raven password? if you don't already have one. You should change your Raven password occasionally, and at any time you suspect that anyone else may know what it is (see How do I change my Raven password?). You should never disclose your Raven password to anyone and you should only enter it on web pages with URLs that start https://raven.cam.ac.uk/. Please report attempts to obtain your password by other means.

Once you have quoted your Raven CRSid and password once, the Raven system will normally remember who you are until you quit your web browser. As a result you should be able to access other Raven-protected sites during this browser session without having to re-enter your password. You can customise this behaviour if you want (see What are Raven 'login options? How do I change them?). If you are normally the only user of a web browser you can also arrange for your user-id to be used by default for Raven authentication (see Can I avoid typing my user-id each time I log in to Raven?).

You should always log out after using Raven, to prevent others from accessing your personal information and visiting Web sites using your identity. The best way to do this is to completely exit your Web browser. If for any reason you can't exit the browser you are using then you should first log-out of all personalised sites that you have accessed and then explicitly logout from Raven at https://raven.cam.ac.uk/auth/logout.html

A list of Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) is available; other questions and requests for support on Raven should be addressed to the UCS Service Desk.