Why am I seeing a large uptick in Outlook clicks that appear to be bots?

Email marketer from Reddit explains that you can implement a honeypot system or look for patterns, for example, IPs clicking all the links within a short time frame. Also consider bot detection services.

Email marketer from Email Vendor Selection states that some click bots are deployed by security services or email clients to pre-scan links for malware or phishing, which can inflate click rates. They recommend monitoring the IP addresses of the clickers for inconsistencies.

Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that link protection services rewrite URLs to protect users from malicious content. This can lead to skewed click metrics, as these services often click links to scan them before a real user does.

Email marketer from Microsoft Support suggests that it could be caused by security software, link expanders, or enterprise firewalls, which may access URLs in email messages, or by automated processes within the Outlook infrastructure itself.

Email marketer from Stack Overflow explains that common reasons include link crawling by email providers for security, pre-fetching of links by email clients to speed up browsing, and automated scans by anti-virus software.

Email marketer from Litmus shares that it's crucial to segment your audience and analyze click patterns. A sudden spike in clicks from a particular domain (like Outlook) might indicate bot activity. They suggest using heatmap tools to identify unusual engagement patterns.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that identifying bot clicks often requires analyzing click patterns, IP addresses, and user agent strings. She recommends using reverse DNS lookups to identify the origin of the clicks. Additionally, they suggest that the best way to handle bots is to prevent the interaction from happening in the first place

Expert from Email Geeks suggests to check metadata about where the clicks come from, such as IP addresses, to investigate the source of the clicks.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests that Microsoft has been exhibiting this behavior for a few months, potentially targeting specific ESPs.

Expert from Email Geeks shares that others have reported similar issues over the past couple of months, suggesting it's not an isolated incident.

Documentation from IETF explains the HTTP 'Do Not Track' header that can be used to signal to websites and services that the user does not want to be tracked. However, this is only a signal and relies on the recipient honoring it.

Documentation from Cloudflare explains that their bot management tools use machine learning to identify and mitigate bot traffic, including those that may be generating spurious clicks on email links. It also detects and mitigates sophisticated bots that try to evade detection.

Documentation from Google Search Central recommends monitoring your website's traffic for sudden spikes or unusual patterns, which could indicate bot activity. Analyzing server logs can help identify the source of the bot clicks.