Individual Public identity validation auto-fails (ResponseHandlerService) with no reason — Trusted/Artifact Signing

Hello Scott Lerch,

Greetings! Thanks for raising this question in the Q&A forum.

An auto-fail roughly a minute after submission, before ever reaching the Verified ID step, is a strong signal that this is not actually a manual vetting rejection at all. Genuine manual reviews by Microsoft's validation team take anywhere from one to seven business days, and a real rejection typically comes with at least some manualReviewReason populated. A failure this fast with everything (vettingResult, reviewInfo, manualReviewReason) coming back null means an automated pre-check inside ResponseHandlerService rejected the request before it was ever routed for actual review. The most common cause of this specific pattern is that your primary email address is already associated with an existing identity validation record somewhere in Microsoft's Trusted Signing backend, even one that is old, failed, or tied to a different subscription or tenant. Microsoft's own Artifact Signing FAQ explicitly calls this out as a known scenario: when an identity validation already exists tied to a given primary email and a new request comes in for that same email, self-service onboarding cannot proceed and requires support intervention.

1. Check for and clean up any stale identity validation requests and Verified ID credentials tied to this account Before assuming this is the duplicate-email scenario, rule out leftover state from a prior attempt, which is the standard first troubleshooting step Microsoft recommends for any unexplained identity validation failure.

Azure portal > Artifact Signing account > Identity validations > delete the failed request
Microsoft Authenticator app > remove any Verified ID credential associated with this identity validation

Then submit a brand new identity validation request from scratch rather than retrying the same one.

Test whether a different primary email resolves it Since your @outlook.com address is the most likely candidate for already being tied to an existing validation record (for example, from an earlier attempt, a different tenant, or even a partially completed request you may not remember), try submitting a new identity validation using a different email address you have not used with Trusted Signing or Artifact Signing before. If the new request no longer auto-fails within a minute, that confirms the duplicate-email theory.

If the same email must be used, this requires support, not a portal retry If you need to keep using this exact email and the auto-fail persists, this is exactly the scenario Microsoft's documentation says cannot be resolved through the self-service flow and needs to be handled directly by their team.

Azure portal > Help + support > New support request
Service: Artifact Signing
Details to include:
  Vetting request ID: 3dd37817-b05f-495f-b74e-fe989d215444
  Subscription ID: 33b1b0d8-95da-46e4-bc18-90979d0b1fcd
  Tenant ID: ef2259c1-d356-47ed-904b-ba473442fea8
  clientType: Individual

Providing all three IDs up front lets support trace the exact record without back and forth, since this class of issue is on Microsoft's backend rather than anything you can fix through configuration.

1. If support confirms no fix is possible, don't leave the account accruing charges Microsoft's own guidance for cases where identity cannot ultimately be validated is to delete the Artifact Signing account so you are not billed for a resource you cannot use. Only do this after support has confirmed there is truly no path forward, since deleting prematurely means restarting the whole onboarding process again.

If this answer helps you kindly accept the answer which will help others who have similar questions.

Best Regards,

Jerald Felix