Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Email and collaborationSafe Links About
In brief
The Safe Links documentation date was updated, and its explanation of URL scanning before delivery, at click time, and through the client-side API was revised.
What Defender admins need to know
Review the updated guidance when assessing Safe Links behavior. No administrator action is stated.
Summaries are generated from the documentation change itself.
Documentation change
View on Microsoft LearnThe comparison below shows only the changed extract. Use the full-page view for complete context.
author: chrisda
ms.author: chrisda
ms.topic: overview
ms.date: 2026-05-22T00:10-14T00:00:00.0000000Z
ms.localizationpriority: medium
ms.collection:
- Strat_O365_IP
- The recipient is also protected by Safe Links.
- The URL was already rewritten in a previous communication.
As long as Safe Links protection is turned on, URLs are scanned prior to message delivery, regardless of whether the URLs are rewritten or not. If rewriting is enabled, links are scanned on click. If rewriting is disabled, unwrapped URLs are checked by a client-side Safe Links API call at the time of click in supported versions of Outlook (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Outlook on the web),.
The settings in Safe Links policies that apply to email messages are described in the following list:
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ manager: bagol author: chrisda ms.author: chrisda ms.topic: overview-ms.date: 2026-05-22T00:00:00.0000000Z+ms.date: 2026-10-14T00:00:00.0000000Z ms.localizationpriority: medium ms.collection: - Strat_O365_IP@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ For *automatic* forwarding by Inbox rules or SMTP forwarding, the URL isn't rewr - The recipient is also protected by Safe Links.
- The URL was already rewritten in a previous communication.
-As long as Safe Links protection is turned on, URLs are scanned prior to message delivery, regardless of whether the URLs are rewritten or not. If rewriting is enabled, links are scanned on click. If rewriting is disabled, unwrapped URLs are checked by a client-side Safe Links API call at the time of click in supported versions of Outlook (Windows, Mac, and Outlook on the web),
+As long as Safe Links protection is turned on, URLs are scanned prior to message delivery, regardless of whether the URLs are rewritten or not. If rewriting is enabled, links are scanned on click. If rewriting is disabled, unwrapped URLs are checked by a client-side Safe Links API call at the time of click in supported versions of Outlook (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Outlook on the web).
The settings in Safe Links policies that apply to email messages are described in the following list: