Azure OpenAI: "unusual activity" BadRequest blocks all model deployments (scale + new) across my subscription

Francisco 25 Reputation points
2026-07-09T04:52:16.8966667+00:00

ENVIRONMENT

  • Service: Azure OpenAI / Azure AI Foundry
  • Regions: Sweden Central (primary), plus France Central and UK South resources
  • Resource kind: OpenAI; deployment SKUs: DataZoneStandard / GlobalStandard
  • Tooling: Azure AI Foundry portal and Azure CLI (az cognitiveservices account deployment create)
  • Support plan: Developer
  • Subscription ID: fb4e0c82-… (masked; full ID available privately to an engineer)

WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO

Scale an existing Azure OpenAI deployment (raise its TPM) and create new deployments.

My gpt-5.4 quota in Sweden Central was just increased (DataZoneStandard ceiling now

9M TPM), so I want to raise my existing 3M-TPM deployment to use the new headroom.

WHAT HAPPENS

Every deployment create/modify operation fails with the same error, in BOTH the

portal and the CLI:

BadRequest: Our system has detected this request as unusual activity for your

account. If you are confident this is in error, please contact support.

Trace ID: a71b790a-c1bb-4753-990d-a01046491fc0

It fails for all of these:

  • Scaling my existing healthy deployment (even a trivial 3M to 3.5M TPM change)
  • Creating a new deployment under any name
  • Deploying to my resources in France Central and UK South (both provisioned OK), including models that deploy fine in Sweden (e.g. gpt-4.1-mini)
  • Deploying the gpt-5-mini / gpt-5-nano family on any resource

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

az cognitiveservices account deployment create \

--name <sweden-openai-resource> --resource-group <rg> \

--deployment-name gpt-5.4 --model-name gpt-5.4 \

--model-version 2026-03-05 --model-format OpenAI \

--sku-name DataZoneStandard --sku-capacity 3500
```  # result: BadRequest "unusual activity"

WHAT I'VE ALREADY CHECKED

- Billing is active and in good standing.

- Not a quota limit: quota was just increased (Sweden DataZone gpt-5.4 ceiling = 9M

  TPM; only 3M currently allocated).

- Not model/region/SKU specific: models and regions that are valid in the catalog

  all fail identically.

- One resource (my original Sweden resource) could previously deploy models; as of

  this week even it can no longer modify deployments. Every other resource has

  always failed with this same error.

- This points to a single account/subscription-level restriction, not a

  resource-level configuration issue.

QUESTION

How do I get this account-level "unusual activity" restriction reviewed and removed?

What is the correct path to reach the Account Review / fraud-review team — for

example an email alias such as azcommunity@microsoft.com, or a specific portal flow?
Foundry Models
Foundry Models

A catalog of AI models in Microsoft Foundry that you can discover, compare, and deploy using Azure’s built‑in tools for evaluation, fine‑tuning, and inference

Answer accepted by question author

Karnam Venkata Rajeswari 5,005 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-08-04T18:03:58.5766667+00:00

Hello @Francisco ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A .Thank you for reaching out to us.

Thank you for providing the detailed information. Based on the behavior observed, the deployment requests appear to be failing during an additional validation stage that occurs before the normal Azure OpenAI deployment provisioning workflow is completed. This is why deployment creation and scaling operations are being rejected even though quota is available and existing deployments continue to serve inference traffic successfully

The specific error message:

"BadRequest: Our system has detected this request as unusual activity for your account. If you are confident this is in error, please contact support."

needs backend team to further review and assist.

We have reached out to you on the private chat for further assistance.

Please check if the following helps-

Thank you

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  1. Alex Burlachenko 25,110 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-07-09T07:03:05.28+00:00

    hi Francisco & thx for sharing urs issue here at Q&A portal,

    this doesn't look like a quota or deployment configuration issue. The key clue is that the exact same BadRequest with 'Our system has detected this request as unusual activity for your account' is returned for

    existing deployment updates

    new deployments

    multiple models

    multiple regions

    both the portal and Azure CLI

    That points to an account/subscription-level restriction rather than anything specific to a model or resource. Unfortunately, there isn't a public process or email alias to request removal of this flag. It has to be reviewed internally by Microsoft. Since you already have a Developer support plan, I'd open a support request under Azure AI Foundry / Azure OpenAI and include the Trace ID +subscription ID+timestamp+affected regions+affected resources & confirmation that quota is available and billing is healthy.

    Ask specifically for the case to be routed to the team that handles account-level security/fraud reviews for Azure OpenAI. I wouldn't keep retrying deployments, since every request is being blocked by the same subscription-level check. The deployment API is just surfacing the restriction; it isn't the root cause.

    rgds,

    Alex

    &

    If my answer was helpful pls mark it and additional thx if u follow me at Q&A portal

    and at my blog https://ctrlaltdel.blog/

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