M365 Changelog: Reminder – Microsoft Defender for Office Empowers End Users to Report Suspicious Messages in Microsoft Teams

MC650414 – This is a follow up of Message Center post – MC567478 and MC611677

The ability for Microsoft Teams users to report internalchats, channels and meeting conversations within Teams as a security risk will be turned ON by default. Security risk messages could include ones that contain phishing or spam or malicious content, such as phishing URL or malware file, spam content. To learn how end users can report, please visit: user reported message settings in Microsoft Teams.

NOTE: This only applies to Microsoft for Defender Plan 2 customers or Microsoft E5/ Office E5 customers.

When this will happen:

This change began going into effect in mid-July 2023 and will be completed for all tenants by late July 2023, if the tenant hasn’t opted out. 

How this will affect your organization:

If you have not turned OFF/disabled, the toggle setting in Teams admin center then end users will be able to report teams’ messages as security risk and it will be routed as per your organization existing user reported settings.

What you need to do to prepare:

The opt out of the default ON options via Teams messaging policies in the Teams admin center ended on July 17th, 2023. The global policy will automatically apply to users in your organization unless you create and assign a custom policy. You can edit the settings in the global policy or create and assign one or more custom policies to turn on or turn off this feature. To learn more, please refer to: Manage messaging policy in teams.


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Please ensure that if you are not opting out or creating custom messaging policies in teams, that on user reported settings, “Monitor reported messages in Microsoft Teams” checkbox under Microsoft Teams’ section is “ON”.

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Otherwise, you won’t be able to check on the user reported page what end users are reporting from Microsoft Teams.


If you have any feedback, please provide it from this Message center post using the text box after you do thumbs up or thumbs down as it will directly reach the responsible team. 

Additional information

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