User impact: Users may have encountered delays or failures when opening links scanned by Safe Links.

More info: Affected users may have experienced the following error: ‘We can’t check the safety of this website right now.’

Final status: As our investigation into the underlying cause was ongoing, we confirmed through system telemetry that the restarts performed on the affected infrastructure successfully mitigated the issue, and that users are no longer experiencing impact when opening links. 

Scope of impact: Impact was specific to some users served through the affected infrastructure who were attempting to open links scanned by Safe Links. 

Start time: Sunday, March 26, 2023, at 9:50 PM UTC

End time: Monday, March 27, 2023, at 4:30 PM UTC

Preliminary root cause: Infrastructure responsible for handling Safe Links requests wasn’t processing traffic as efficiently as expected. 

Next steps: 
– We’re continuing to investigate what caused the infrastructure to operate inefficiently. 
– We’re monitoring system telemetry to confirm impact to end users does not recur.

We’ll publish a post-incident report within five business days.