This topic

I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

Melenge74 — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 12:33:16 GMT

I am unable to open links within outlook and my organisation has just informed us that this is only affecting BT customers due to a recent DNS change.

i am currently hotspoting from my phone as a workaround to allow me open links.

When will this be resolved

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

ThatGuyJake — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 13:29:26 GMT

Same issue for our company. Started yesterday morning.

BT / Plusnet users struggling to open outlook links that leverage safelinks.

Sounds like a DNS issue.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 14:01:50 GMT

Not just you guys but @Les-Gibson reported recently that the DNS issue even breaks links in BT's own emails! Case in point was the recent price rise email.

https://community.bt.com/t5/Bills-Packages/Hmmm-can-t-reach-this-page/m-p/2353149

You can apparently get round it by manually entering Google's DNS on the device you use to access email.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

Les-Gibson — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 14:36:37 GMT

That's correct, I was unable to open a link in an email from BT whilst using BT DNS servers but the same link opened up fine when I switched to Google DNS.

Says a lot about BT DNS that you can't even trust it to resolve a link to their own web site

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

jasonmleds12 — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 14:48:36 GMT

I have the same issue. Need to use a VPN to make it work... I guess it's a DNS issue?

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

Les-Gibson — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:30:09 GMT

@jasonmleds12

Yes it is a DNS issue.

I got round it by changing the DNS server address to Google (8.8.8.8) at machine level so no VPN required

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

MightyGeorge — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:41:07 GMT

Definitely a DNS issue at BT's servers - the A record for eur03 in the safelinks.protection.outlook.com zone is missing from their servers, which is what our M365/O365 is using to check links in emails.

Nothing that we can do, it's waiting for BT to acknowledge there's a problem and address it. The only workaround for is to manually configure local IP settings on devices to use other public DNS services (e.g., Google DNS servers on 8.8.8.8), but this will effectively bypass BT's parental controls and Web Protect service.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:45:20 GMT

@MightyGeorgewrote:
The only workaround for is to manually configure local IP settings on devices to use other public DNS services (e.g., Google DNS servers on 8.8.8.8), but this will effectively bypass BT's parental controls and Web Protect service.

There's always OpenDNS for protection & other posts suggest that BT's Parental Controls are of the chocolate fireguard standard.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

jonathanhamilton — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 09:51:57 GMT

I have same issue. Cannot access any link from outlook. Had to change to several global DNS as a work around.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

MightyGeorge — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 12:10:27 GMT

Spent some time speaking with BT tech support last night and shared a bunch of data, and they've opened an internal incident to look into it. Details haven't been shared, but was quoted 5 days to resolve (which is what they always say). Fingers crossed we see something by Wednesday 13th March.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

ThatGuyJake — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 12:17:12 GMT

Nice one George. Mighty indeed 👍

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

jasonmleds12 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 12:29:21 GMT

Thanks, mate!

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

MightyGeorge — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:00:37 GMT

Good news, looks like BT has fixed it - eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com is now resolving properly.

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

jasonmleds12 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:02:54 GMT

Can confirm it is working now

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

highlander25361 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:14:58 GMT

Yup, working for me and several of my collegues as well

Re: I am unable to open links sent within outlook.(safelinks)

RichardMBradley — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:52:01 GMT

I have a number of home workers who are still having problems which seems to be caused by the caching DNS server in their routers still having the poisoned DNS entry.

A restart of the home routers is now fixing this.