Office365 mail verifying links suddenly

Question

Office365 mail verifying links suddenly

Barry Murphy 0

Recently something has changed in Microsoft office 365. Both my iPhone and my Mac Outlook takes a while to open any link, it shows a a shield and says "Verifying Link" before opening the destination link. It's just suddenly been turned on, I'm the admin for the domain and use cloud office 365 and havent changed anything.

It's not safe link as if I hover or copy the link, the actual link is not modified; from the Apache web server, we see a HEAD call to the URL with no user agent

[moderator's note: PII removed] "HEAD /members/verify-email.php?token=xxx[moderator's note: PII removed]

Thi has actually caused reset passwords and one time tokens to fail for some services.

How do I disable this "Verifying Link" new feature thats been imposed on us?

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Answer 1

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Hi Barry Murphy,

I understand your concern, especially since the verification request appears to be invalidating password-reset and one-time-use tokens before the user can open them.

The “Verifying Link” screen is consistent with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 checking a URL at the time it is selected.

Please check the Safe Links policies in the Microsoft Defender portal to see whether the affected users are covered by a built-in, Standard, Strict, or custom policy. You could also open the same message in Outlook on the web and test the link there. This may help determine whether the behavior is specific to Outlook for iOS and Mac or is being applied at the tenant level.

Could you also confirm:

Your Microsoft 365 and Defender for Office 365 licenses
The Outlook versions installed on the iPhone and Mac
Whether this happens with all links or mainly single-use verification and password-reset links

If no applicable policy explains the behavior, I recommend opening a service request through Microsoft 365 admin center > Support > Help & support. Microsoft Support can review the tenant configuration and help identify which service is issuing the HEAD request. Thank you so much for your understanding.

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