Microsoft Edge is making Suspicious Connection?

Anonymous
2023-11-02T09:18:58+00:00

is Microsoft is making suspicious connection to this URL deff.nelreports.net/api/report?

Also let us know which data is being sent to this URL & When?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Security and privacy

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2023-11-15T15:40:03+00:00

*.nelreports.net is a Microsoft domain. Several certificates used on the subdomains of this domain expired last week.

There is no security impact or end-user-impact of the certificate expiration -- Basically, the browser will be unable to submit Network Error Logging reports until the certificate is corrected. Network Error Logging is a HTML5 feature to allow site owners to discover network connectivity problems. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Network\_Error\_Logging

Your security software is just announcing "Hey, this certificate is bad", a fact that the browser already was determining on its own, and to which it responds by not connecting to the server in question. The security software provides a redundant warning -- the browser will not use connections with expired or invalid certificates.

The subdomain names are random strings of characters with no particular meaning.

The relevant team has been notified about the certificate expiration and will correct the issue.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-11-16T10:23:27+00:00

    Major update package form ms for windows 11 yesterday 15. now. seems to have solved the problem. I have 23H2 version.

    KB 5032190, 5032007, 5032884, 2267602 and 890830.

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  2. Rob Koch 26,170 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2023-11-14T19:04:12+00:00

    Read the entire thread Steven & Phober, there's a lot more known about this Microsoft MSN support website than you realize, so it really doesn't matter from a security sense that the certificate isn't up to date, since all of the sites involved are within Microsoft's control.

    That's not saying it's a false positive, but in truth, Bitdefender displaying this alert in this case is simply annoying the user and doing nothing to truly 'protect' you.

    In fact, from what I've seen, the simplest way to remove the problem is to simply turn off the MSN Newsfeed on the default New Tab settings in Microsoft Edge, since that's apparently where the article pages are that are calling these particular error reporting pages with the expired certificate. In other words, if the MSN News pages don't display, the errors also shouldn't occur, though I don't have Bitdefender to test and would never want it installed on my own devices.

    I've personally disabled the MSN Newsfeed and other default Microsoft start pages over 2 decades ago, since I prefer a simple About: Blank web page with no content as my own initial display, so I'd never see this issue in any case. I don't believe in vendor provided pages and instead prefer to choose my own, which provides true security and privacy.

    Rob

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-12T08:40:34+00:00

    You are welcome. I hope it will renew. But I'm not the younger generation. maybe TairikuOkami is. But I was also working on that IBM 360 sometime in the 70's & also sit in a chair today. Good luck, brethren.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-11-12T08:21:13+00:00

    Yes, that is about the time it started 2-3 days ago. I'll wait until after Nov 15 when it renews. Thanks for the information. I believe many of us were concerned about this. You guys have come a long way from when I started working on IBM 360 Model 30 computers in 1972. Been retired for many years now and it's way beyond me anymore! I'm a "user" now, you know the nut between the keyboard and the seat, yea! :) Great to see the younger generation push the technology further down the road. Thanks for the help it's much appreciated.

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