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JohannRabe asked JohannRabe answered

"Send on Behalf" frustration with a personalized email alias via GoDaddy custom Domain

Introduction:

I have MS365 Personal Subscription and want to upgrade to MS365 Family Subscription, to then setup my family. I thought I'd invest in doing so and make use of a new GoDaddy custom domain and then connecting and adding the personalized alias. However, before I upgrade the subscription, I wanted to test functionality making sure all works as expected, however I'm experiencing this showstopper situation and if it can't be "fixed", then I'm not going with Family Subscription and also not repeat this exercise for other families unfortunately.

Issue:

When sending an email to external parties, using the new alias from address,

(which didn't need to manually type, but just select: "someone@customdomain"),

the emails are delivered but with the unfortunate "send on behalf" tag which is then also identified as suspicious because the sender is different from the from address.

Result:

Am I missing something? Should I make my new custom alias the primary address? I can't use this whole premium solution to send such tagged emails if this is going to be the case, who would want to ? Manual client-side whitelisting isn't worth the effort.

Supplemental:

  • Using a standard alias with a Microsoft Domain does not tag it, it works as expected.

  • Email header results from the custom domain alias: SPF=pass, DKIM=pass, CompAuth=failed, DMARC=not configured even with Microsoft Domains such as @live, @hotmail, @outlook. (Would've wanted to add the DNS record for DMARC to reject as a next step).

Here are a couple of screenshots from Outlook clients on pc & mobile, and even GMail on web is complaining:

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office-outlook-itpro
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Hi @JohannRabe ,

In order to further research this case, please provide relevant information about the following questions:
When the email is delivered with "send on behalf", which email address is this email sent from?
For the personalized email alias you mentioned, is the email an Microsoft365 account?
And will the issue occur when you test on the web mail?

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Hi ChristyZhang-MSFT,

When the email is delivered with "send on behalf", which email address is this email sent from?
Answer: As per https://mha.azurewebsites.net/, the FROM address = The custom domain.
106519-image.png

But as per the same report for the same email, the MHA Report also shows: the Sender is address = the primary account alias @hotmail.com.
106711-image.png



For the personalized email alias you mentioned, is the email an Microsoft365 account?
Answer: The custom domain alias is not currently set as the primary login account.

And will the issue occur when you test on the web mail?
Answer: Yes.


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JohannRabe avatar image
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JohannRabe answered

Now to get DMARC configured on this... Not sure if it's possible on Microsoft's email domains though I do have access to control the custom domain's DNS records.

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JohannRabe answered ChristyZhang-MSFT commented

So I thought, let me start a-fresh. I went over to account.microsoft.com to remove the custom domain alias. (which was NOT set as primary of course). I deleted it:

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Here is the confirmation that it was indeed deleted:

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And here is the security event log:

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I then went back to outlook.live.com > Settings > Premium Features > Personalized email address, and from there tried to re-add the custom domain alias but now I'm presented with a brand new issue. I can't add the alias. "There was an error adding your alias". I then tried adding a new never used before alias by typing in "test@xxx.co.za", but the new issue remains. (sigh).

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How frustrating. Should I try adding the alias from accounts.microsoft.com instead of the outlook.live.com page ?:

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Mmm. Something at outlook.live.com/settings is broken with the "Personalized email address" Settings page and the wizard used to create the alias. Even though the wizard says there was an "error adding your alias", the Info page at account.microsoft.com does show that it was added. However, one would expect then, that the Personalized email address screen would also reflect the connection that the alias exists, but it does not. It still asks "create an email address", nothing is showing up in it's list that there is an associated email address.

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I now for 3rd time removed the aliases from account.microsoft.com and again restarted the wizard. For some unknown reason, the association took place correctly (for the first time).

At last the "send on behalf / via" issue is gone ! Even Gmail is happy now...

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And I can only guess why it's working now:

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Hi @JohannRabe ,

I'm glad your problem has been solved! Please mark your post as the answer so that people with the same questions can get help.

Thanks for your understanding!

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