Microsoft Defender blocking legitimate Google links
Microsoft Defender has spent much of 2026 reminding us that even the software protecting Windows can occasionally get things spectacularly wrong.
The latest example affects Microsoft Defender for Office 365, which has started flagging legitimate Google search links as malicious. Users attempting to open certain Google URLs may instead be greeted by a warning claiming that visiting the website could be unsafe.
Microsoft has confirmed the problem and says there is no actual threat hiding inside the Google links. The issue is simply a bad security classification in Defender’s Safe Links system, which is mistakenly treating legitimate Google search URLs as malicious.
The bug can cause more than an annoying warning, too. Organizations using Defender may see related alerts and incidents appear in the Microsoft Defender portal and Microsoft Sentinel, potentially sending administrators chasing a security problem that doesn’t actually exist.
This isn’t the first Defender hiccup this year. The security platform has already had to deal with vulnerabilities such as RedSun and RoguePlanet, while another recent bug falsely warned users that Defender had been disabled.
None of that makes Defender a bad security product. In fact, for most Windows users, Microsoft’s built-in protection remains a perfectly reasonable security solution. But antivirus software is ultimately software, and software occasionally gets things wrong.
Microsoft says it has identified the cause and is working on a fix.
