It is often difficult to determine if an email link is a legitimate URL or a trick leading to malware infection, data loss or identity theft. Fortunately, Safe Links, a feature of Office 365’s Advanced Threat Protection email security service, helps faculty and staff make the correct call on links sent through email.
What is Safe Links?
Safe Links verifies that a link sent within an email is not malware and is one of the tools available through Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) security service.
How does Safe Links work?
Links within email look different, and this is how you know each URL has been vetted through the ATP anti-spam and anti-malware filter. Some email links will be exceptionally detailed and contain the “safelinksprotection.outlook.com” address as well as an extra-long string of numbers and letters.
Other links may look relatively normal.
When you click a link to open it, one of three things will happen:
- If the site is safe, the website opens.
- If the site is suspect, a warning page opens but allows you to continue if you feel the site is safe.
- If the site is malicious, a warning page opens, and you are unable to continue to the site.
What do you need to do?
There is nothing you need do. These tools are part of the Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) cloud service and run in the background to safeguard your account by verifying that links sent to you are not malicious. If you have a question or encounter a problem, contact the IT Help Desk at 252-328-9866 | 800-340-7081.