Microsoft Edge's SmartScreen is flagging ProtonMail's website as malicious
Recently, ProtonMail experienced an outage spread across three days that prevented users from accessing their inbox. Now, some users have a similar issue, as Microsoft Edge's SmartScreen is blocking them from viewing their mails.
In case you didn't know, Proton rebranded its services under a unified branding called Proton.me a couple of months ago. While your email address remains the same (e.g. [email protected]), the website itself has moved to Proton.Me. If you try to visit Protonmail.com, it will redirect you to Proton.me.
Microsoft Edge's SmartScreen is flagging ProtonMail's website as malicious
Try to visit https://proton.me/ in Edge, it will load the page normally. This applies to most of the links on the site, including the login portal, account.proton.me. You can sign in to your account too, but that's where the issue occurs. If you try to access https://mail.proton.me/, you will be greeted by a red screen with a warning that reads,
"This site has been reported as unsafe Hosted by mail.proton.me. Microsoft recommends you don't continue to this site. It has been reported to Microsoft for containing phishing threats which may try to steal personal or financial information."
When a user sees a message like that, they could panic and assume that the website has been hacked or infected with malware. That's how SmartScreen is designed to work.
The website for the company's cloud storage service, Proton Drive, is also impacted by the issue. On the other hand, Proton Calendar and ProtonVPN's websites seem to be unaffected. Proton Status' website only shows some issues related to the company's VPN services, i.e., the e-mail service is fully operational.
So, the question is has Proton been hacked?
No. Proton says that a bug in Microsoft Edge's SmartScreen is flagging the URLs incorrectly, and that it has contacted the Redmond company to fix the issue. Proton also took a cheeky swipe at Microsoft Edge by recommending users to use a different/better browser, as a workaround.
Speaking of other browsers, I had no trouble accessing ProtonMail in Firefox, Safari, Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Chrome. They all load the same servers, so this problem is isolated to Edge, and not limited to the OS, i.e. when I tried to access it, Edge blocked the sites in both Windows and macOS.
I don't think it is a good idea to disable SmartScreen, because you never know when a website could really be dangerous. If you really need to access your inbox in Edge without turning the security feature off, visit Proton's site, and then click on the ! Dangerous icon in the address bar. Select the button that says "Show unsafe content", and it should load your inbox. The issue is, you will have to do this every time you access the site.
Warning: I wouldn't advise following the above method every time you run into blocked sites, for security reasons.
On a sidenote, the Proton Drive app for Android is now available on the Google Play Store for beta testing. The iOS app's beta program The Per the roadmap which we wrote about, Proton Drive for Windows and iOS
Do you use ProtonMail in Microsoft Edge?
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!