GoKawiilMicrosoft Defender for Office 365 mistakenly blocked Google Search links for hours
On September 2, Microsoft's Safe Links feature within Defender for Office 365 began misidentifying Google Search URLs shared in emails and Teams messages as malicious, blocking users from opening them. The outage, tracked internally as MO1465962, lasted about seven and a half hours before Microsoft resolved the faulty detection logic, though some users may have experienced lingering effects.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
This is another instance in a pattern of false positives from Microsoft's security tools, which can erode trust in automated threat detection and disrupt everyday productivity for enterprise customers paying for Office 365. It also highlights the risk of over-aggressive URL reputation systems that, if miscalibrated, can block legitimate business communication at scale.
- Microsoft Defender's Safe Links wrongly flagged Google Search URLs as malicious for roughly 7.5 hours.
- The issue, tracked as MO1465962, was blamed on inaccurate threat-detection behavior and has been resolved.
- Microsoft says it is reviewing its URL reputation classification process to prevent similar false positives.
Microsoft 365 Personal (1-Year Subscription) — If you're following the Defender Safe Links saga, it's because Office 365 is the backbone of how you work y anyway. A Microsoft 365 Personal subscription keeps Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint current across your devices, plus cloud storage for your files. It's the same suite whose security layer made headlines and it stays automatically updated as Microsoft patches things.
See Microsoft 365 Personal (1-Year Subscription) on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: techspot.com — Alfonso Maruccia, 2026-09-03
Published there as: “Microsoft Defender briefly decided Google Search was malware”
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