Tech Tip: What are Office 365 Safelinks?

By: Ryan Johnson

safelinks screenshot image for tech tip 1/14/19

Office 365 at Penn State is equipped with a security feature known as “Safe Links.” This feature ensures that “links,” or web addresses and URLs, transmitted through emails, documents, etc., are safe to open and are not malicious. You may have noticed that links shared within Office 365 applications are displayed in a “long-URL” format, which appears longer than the usual site address.

When a message contains a clickable image or text, the original address of the link will be replaced with a “safe link”. The safe link directs your browser to an Office 365 service that tests to determine if the original address is potentially dangerous.

Safe links contain “safelinks.protection.outlook.com/” near the beginning of the link in Office 365. If you point your mouse at a link, you’ll see where the link points.

Any link that references a Penn State site (i.e. sites ending in “.psu.edu”) through Office 365 will not be shown in the longer format (i.e. https://na01.safelinks.protection…) and will retain the original URL.