Do email security software solutions click hyperlinks in emails?

Marketer from Email Geeks answers yes, email security platforms regularly follow links.

Email marketer from PhishingProtectionBlog.com shares that anti-phishing systems often crawl links in emails to detect and block phishing attacks.

Email marketer from EmailVendorReviewer.com shares that it is a common practice for email security solutions to scan all links in an email to ensure they are safe and do not lead to phishing sites or malware.

Email marketer from SANS institute shares that determining the reputation of a URL and if it is associated with a known bad actor are techniques used to determine the safety of links in emails.

Email marketer from Stack Overflow shares that security software often follows links to check for malicious content. This includes link reputation analysis and checking for phishing attempts.

Email marketer from InfosecCommunity.org explains that security vendors regularly visit links within emails as part of their threat intelligence gathering to identify and mitigate emerging threats.

Marketer from Email Geeks shares if you don't use a click-tracking domain to hide the link destinations then you will be bothered less as the destination is obvious.

Marketer from Email Geeks explains most of them just sample the inbound traffic so yes, there would not be a pattern.

Marketer from Email Geeks explains if the URL is dynamically generated / serialised then that can cause issues because the filters see different links to the source, so they follow each one until they work it out.

Email marketer from Reddit shares that many security solutions use 'URL detonation' which involves visiting the linked URL in a sandbox environment to analyze the page's behavior and content for threats.

Email marketer from EmailSecurityForums.com explains that email security tools validate links by checking them against known blacklists, scanning for malware, and verifying the legitimacy of the destination website.

Email marketer from CyberSecurityForums.net shares that some advanced security solutions emulate user clicks on links to observe the behavior of the destination website and identify potential threats.

Email marketer from TechTarget explains that techniques such as static code analysis, dynamic analysis via sandboxing, and reputation lookups are used to examine URLs for potential threats.

Expert from Word to the Wise shares that some systems, particularly those doing safe link handling, will rewrite URLs and check the destination when a user clicks.

Expert from Spamresource.com explains that anti-spam systems may follow links in emails to verify the destination and check for malicious content. However, I wasn't able to find any direct answer about this topic on the specific page. But from the general content of this site I can assume the answer will be yes.

Documentation from Google explains Google Safe Browsing crawls websites to identify unsafe sites and adds them to blacklists. This includes analyzing links found in emails to protect users from phishing and malware.

Documentation from Microsoft shares that Microsoft Defender's Safe Links feature rewrites URLs in incoming email messages. When a user clicks a link, Safe Links verifies the URL before it's opened. If the URL is found to be malicious, a warning page is displayed.

Documentation from Cisco explains that Talos employs sophisticated techniques to analyze links in emails, including sandboxing and reputation scoring, to identify and block malicious URLs.

Documentation from Proofpoint shares Proofpoint's URL Defense rewrites URLs. When a user clicks, it checks the destination in real-time. Malicious URLs are blocked, protecting users from threats.

Documentation from Barracuda states that Barracuda Email Security Service protects against malicious URLs by scanning links in real-time and blocking access to dangerous sites.