Outlook.com Rejecting Legitimate Mail – 550 5.7.515 Authentication Alignment Error

Question

I am reporting an issue where Outlook.com is rejecting legitimate email I send, including messages I send to myself for testing. This is causing loss of important communication.

Outlook has gotten worse and worse over the years regarding blocking legitimate emails, especially verification emails from various websites to the point where I now exclusively use alternate email addresses, not my Outlook email address, when signing up to websites or creating new accounts. These emails don't even show up in my Junk folder anymore, they just totally fail to ever appear at all.

I tried sending emails to myself through a school email address, which always gets blocked for whatever reason, and the rejection message I receive is:

550 5.7.515 Access denied – sending domain doesn’t meet the required authentication level

The bounce details show:

• SPF: Fail
• DKIM: Pass
• DMARC: Pass
• The domain in the visible “From” address does not align with the domain of the server transmitting the message.

This appears to be a false positive authentication alignment failure. The email is legitimate, originates from my own account, and is not spoofed. The rejection is occurring because Outlook.com is enforcing strict alignment rules that do not account for normal routing used by many organizations.

This behavior is causing Outlook.com to block valid mail instead of delivering it or placing it in Junk. It is preventing normal communication and causing me to miss messages.

And adjusting the "Junk email" and "Safe senders and domains" settings don't help at all.

Answer 1

It shows that SPF failed.

What's your domain if you don't mind sharing?