Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is ruining Outlook.com

[rpodric]

About a week ago, I noticed that all URLs were suddenly extremely long/obscure, and beginning with something like: https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=

It destroys the URL visibility experience.

I quickly realized that this was an Office 365 (E5) feature called ATP, but I'm not talking about Office 365 here but rather the consumer Outlook.com site.

I need to find out if we're going to be able to disable this, and when.

It's unbelievable that MS just foisted it on us, since it's not even in the vast majority of Office 365 plans!  I realize that some people have been seeing it longer than one week.

[#2]

I've been trying to get access to SSWUG.ORG for days now.  I wanted to watch a live presentation about SQL Server Setup.  All my attempts are blocked by a scan that never seems to complete.

[#3]

I agree. As a result of this "feature" links never seem to load for me. Just disable the feature. Unfortunately I still cannot load links from emails already received.

[#4]

@Cian Allner  does this have to be done by only Admin ?

[#5]

@Robert Woods 

Just wondering if this promised change has been released and if so - how do I get it

Thanks

John

[#6]

@jdavy51 Sorry, I am just a participant in the thread, not from Microsoft.

[#7]

You were able to disable it...? how?

[#8]

OMG, found it!! I'll finally be able to click links again! Ironically, here's a LINK to it: https://outlook.live.com/mail/options/premium/security
You can get there by:
1. Click the stupid diamond thing "premium" on the top, it will open settings in the premium section.
2. Click on the stupid Security subsection
3. Click o the stupid switch under "Advanced" sub-sub-section where there is a very long, evasive text - it's a bunch of crap how they keep you safe, as opposed to Microsoft reading all links that come through your email.

To be honest, I obviously don't really care that the Microsoft robots are collecting my information, otherwise I'd use a proper paid email system... the problem is that they are actually making me go through a portal to get to links and it's making my analysis of phishy links very difficult, I can't just check that the domain is what it should be in a split-second like I could before, not to mention it doesn't work through some proxies and adds a significant delay.
They could at least have the decency to inject a right-click menu with options like "view/copy insecure URL" and "open without protection" or some crap.

[#9]

Every Link in my hotmail.com will not open and gives me a nam10. safelinks. protection.outlook.com 

@Cian Allner 

[#10]

I got frustrated with OFFICE 365 and strange email behavior, but when they denied me access to my wife's account I went to Open Office and G Mail.  (My wife will not touch the computer and uses a flip phone.)  I found out very quickly that MICROSOFT was scooping ALL mail to the M$ Cloud, Including my *.odf and other Open Office files.  They are a MONSTER!  Everybody knows everything about us.  DISGUSTING.  My Excel keeps putting notice tags about my formatting that hide a cell I want to use.  DARN IT, I know what I want to do.  Just leave me alone.  Our retiree group calls MICROSOFT "M$" because Microsoft plays dirty to make up buy new.  WIN 7 was easy to use.  WIN 10 is a bunch of mish-mosh software and it is not at all intuitive.  No real engineers developed WIN 10.

And another thing.  Auto Save is a disaster.  If you make a big mistake just before the M$ Goons decide to save, you are messed up bad.  I keep it off when they give me a choice.

[#11]

Hello, 

I just got set up with Office 365. I work in content development and news and we email each other links all day long. Unfortunately all of the URLs we are sending each other are totally screwed up and have safelinks jibberish added to them.

I have had Office 365 for an hour and the entire team is at a standstill. We're using slack for the moment but need email. Is there really no way to turn this off? This is so frustrating. I will have to leave Office 365 because this is totally unusable. 

[#12]

Hi all
In work we have a big problem with this now effecting 70 thousand employees.

Problem is that when you copy a link from a hyperlink and paste into word or excel or any other file or document. The link becomes unusable for anyone else accept the user who added it to the document.

The safelink has encryption within it to allows the experts to be able trace back the hyperlink if it leaves the work environment or if required to see who over time as spread the link. But by doing this hyperlinks have now become redundant. As the only way now around this is to each time just post the full link to the page or document and not use hyperlink. This is a pain un the arse. Delaying and preventing work being done. It will mean that business will stop using outlook and instead move to other forms if this continues. Please resolve this. This is a big problem that Microsoft are ignoring. Its causing a lot of issues and rework costing hi sums of wasted money from wasted time.

Regards

[#13]

To add insult to injury, my Office Outlook Inbox still has unread items that I can't get to, as they were received before I disabled this diabolical 'tool'. I was wondering for a few weeks (i) why my mail was and web pages were so slow to open (I had noticed the sly pre-load reference to the safelinks URL, but had disregarded it until my mail became unusable); and (ii) when I was unable to access links in perfectly legimate emails, even after I had forwarded those emails to another (non-MS) email address so that I could follow the links and download important information.
Get this straight Microsoft, I have plenty of paid anti-phishing and virus protection software that has worked fine for over a decade. Your intrusion in this matter is another example of the totally irresponsible engineering and version release policies and procedures that are driving people away from Microsoft - except those of us held to use your products because of constraints such a corporate standards.
I don't believe it's unreasonable of me to ask, no demand, that you remove this albatross immediately and give back my access to my now inaccessible email links.

[#14]

Opt out (which I have done) does not re-enable emails already received prior to disabling this folly.
This is more like a hijack than it is an anti-phishing tool.

[#15]

In my case, clicking on such a link triggers an action that should actually be triggered by the enclosed link, but this then no longer works because the action was already performed but led to an incorrect result.
I send such links to hundreds of thousands of users every day. Many users complain about the wrong behavior of these links.
Please give me a solution to turn this off.