SafeLinks Decoder

Paste a rewritten email link and read the URL underneath it.

Everything runs in your browser. The link is decoded here in this tab — nothing you paste is uploaded, and no URL on this page is ever requested or followed.

What this tells you, and what it doesn't

Mail security gateways rewrite the links in a message so that clicks route through them first. The address you end up looking at in the message is the gateway's, and the one you actually wanted is buried inside it. This page pulls it back out.

That is the whole job. Recovering a URL is not a judgement about it. This tool identifies and reverses the rewriting; it says nothing about whether the destination is safe, and it never visits the address to find out. Treat what comes back the way you would treat any link from a message you were already unsure about.

Everything runs in your browser: the link is never sent to this site or anywhere else, no request is made to the decoded address, and the result is deliberately plain text rather than something clickable.

Where these links usually turn up

Most often while reading a message's raw source — which is also where the rest of the story is. The Email Header Analyzer takes the same raw source and walks the delivery path, authentication results, and sender alignment. If the message bounced instead of arriving, Why Did This Email Fail? translates the bounce code into what actually went wrong.

Gateways it recognises

Gateway What the link looks like Result
Microsoft Defender SafeLinks
nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=…
Decoded
Proofpoint URL Defense v1 and v2
urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=…
Decoded
Proofpoint URL Defense v3
urldefense.com/v3/__…__;…$
Decoded
Barracuda Link Protect
linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=…
Decoded
Cisco Secure Email
secure-web.cisco.com/<token>/…
Decoded
Mimecast URL Protection
protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/<token>
url.us.mimecastprotect.com/s/<token>
Identified only

Mimecast is the exception, and not because of a gap here. Every other gateway carries the original URL inside the rewrite, encoded but intact. Mimecast's token is a lookup key into the gateway that issued it — the destination only exists on Mimecast's side, so there is nothing in the link to decode. This page names the vendor and stops rather than guessing.

Nesting is handled: a message that crossed a Proofpoint gateway and was then forwarded into a Microsoft tenant arrives wrapped twice, and each layer is unwrapped in turn until the original is reached.