First Contact Safety Tip - Please provide a method to disable

Les 11 Reputation points
2024-04-02T23:14:34.3966667+00:00

Microsoft Defender and Exchange Online Protection have a feature called "First Contact Safety Tip"
This feature inserts a line into the beginning of messages indicating You don't often get email from <email address>

This seems innocent enough, but because it is inserted into the beginning of the body of the message, THAT is what gets reported in the message preview function - essentially rendering message preview worthless.

What is worse, is that from every account I can find, there are plenty of ways to turn it off - but none of those methods actually TURN IT OFF. It seemingly can't be done.

You can create a new phishing policy that has it disabled, but you CANNOT disable the Standard Preset Security Policy which has it enabled. The same is true of the Strict Preset Security Policy - can't turn it off. Further, for both the Standard and Strict Preset Security Policies you CANNOT CHANGE THEIR SETTINGS. Attempting to change them through the online tools nets what amounts to 'no response', and through Powershell just returns "WARNING: All recommended properties will be controlled by Microsoft."

One thing that is particularly frustrating to my users is that this feature seems to have no idea who the user does or does not exchange messages with regularly - because the users are reporting that it applies that line to contacts they have corresponded with on a regular basis for years. Honestly, I would blow this part off if it were just one or two users, but its not.
I've been through MANY articles in the forums and many responses from people apparently trying to 'earn points' by linking to 'switches to turn this feature off' - and for every link and every method there are a hundred admins saying "Yeah, tried that - it doesn't work"... because it doesn't. It doesn't work because the places you are able to turn it off are over-ridden by Microsoft controlled settings that turn it ON - and can't be changed.

PLEASE - Tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me what I am missing that will allow me to actually disable this feature for my organization... before the users get together and beat me up on the way to my car at night.

Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365
Formerly Office 365, is a line of subscription services offered by Microsoft which adds to and includes the Microsoft Office product line.
5,771 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.