The global outage affecting Microsoftservices also hit users in Germany on 13 November 2026. The The University of Hamburg reported disruption to Teams and other cloud services, while also warning of a security issue: according to its data centre, Microsoft’s automatic link checking was not working because of the outage. Messages and their senders should therefore be checked with particular care.
The university advised users in particular not to open suspicious links, for example in Teams chats. Restarting a computer or changing a password would not fix the outage, the data centre said. The problem was on Microsoft’s servers. Based on the information available at the time, it was not a cyberattack.
The Munich University of Applied Sciences reported disruption. It said access to mailboxes via Outlook and other applications could fail; emails could be delivered late. Features in other services that access the email platform Exchange Online could also be affected. The university said on the morning of 13 November that Microsoft was working to resolve the issue. At that point, no time had been given for full restoration of service.
The outage therefore affects more than just access to messages and applications. When automatic security checks fail, users have to assess suspicious messages without this additional assistance. However, the warning from the University of Hamburg does not amount to evidence that any fraud attempts linked to the outage had already taken place there.
How fake technical support operates is described by the Hannover Police Directorate independently of the current outage. According to the police, perpetrators pose as employees of IT companies on the phone. They may also use convincing fake websites, pop-up messages or emails to pretend that there is a technical problem. The aim, the police say, is to obtain personal data or money.
Microsoft also warns about unsolicited support calls. If someone has not previously asked the company for help, Microsoft will not call them to offer technical support. Scammers may try to gain remote access to a computer and use it to steal data or install malware, the company says.
One distinction is essential: a genuine Microsoft outage is confirmed; that does not mean that every purported support message is legitimate, nor that an attack caused the outage. Conversely, the existence of this general scam does not in itself prove there is a current wave of fraud in Germany.
The outage shows how heavily communication processes can depend on shared digital services. When mailboxes are slow and security checks are also restricted, organisational and security-related problems coincide. The reports from Hamburg and Munich describe the situation at those institutions; they do not show how many people or organisations across Germany were affected overall.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).