MicrosoftMicrosoftHi, what if spf/dkim has temperror?
What Does “Temperror” Mean in SPF or DKIM?
If you're seeing temperror in SPF or DKIM results, it means the receiving email server couldn’t complete the authentication check because of a temporary DNS issue. This is not a permanent failure, but it can still impact email delivery.
What Causes It
SPF temperror may happen due to:
DKIM temperror may happen due to:
Why It Matters
How to Fix It
Summary
SPF and DKIM temperrors are temporary issues that stop email authentication from completing. They don’t cause immediate rejection, but they can reduce email deliverability and trust. Fixing them ensures reliable authentication and protects your domain’s reputation.
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If you’re not familiar with the topic of email authentication, it’s best not to have AI generate a reply that includes incorrect information.
The “too many DNS lookups (limit is 10)” scenario your AI mentioned, as well as having more than two “void DNS lookups,” actually result in a permerror , not a temperror. Temperror is specifically for temporary issues, like timeouts, DNS servers being momentarily unreachable, or transient DNS failures. Permerror, on the other hand, covers permanent configuration problems, such as exceeding SPF lookup limits or having invalid or missing records.
So, if you see a temperror, it’s almost always a temporary DNS problem (for example, DNS timeout, DNS server not responding, or intermittent DNS failures). If you hit DNS lookup limits or have structurally invalid records, you’ll get a permerror instead, which means the issue must be fixed on the sender’s side.
Just wanted to help clarify, since this distinction can make a difference when troubleshooting email deliverability problems!
Not sure if this is the case, there are several reports by other people,
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2278218/spf-dkim-failures-from-external-sender-to-ms-outlo
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/dkim-timeout-in-the-mails-sent-to-hotmailcom-from/a5675f09-a143-45ad-9264-fde30849102b#:~:text=Here%20are%20some%20suggestions%20for%20you%20to%20consider%3A,and%20public%20keys%20match%202.%20Verify%20DNS%20Records
Also someone shared this mentioning outlook.com has acknowledge this in past but no referring article was attached.
https://www.uriports.com/blog/outlook-com-dkim-temperror-in-dmarc-reports/
People who are using 3rd party mail services like sendgrid might not even know unless someone looks into bounce rates or have dmarc aggregate reports that would uncover this issue. Randomly outlook.com is giving temperror for long time now.
And the question i have is, due to this temperror, and the new requirements, would they reject emails?
