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Amazon SES Bounces Support 2021-03-19

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And it appears that many have issues with getting the core Amazon SES ability set up even before they start thinking about bounce/unsubscribe.

You can write a guide about how to set up Amazon SES outside of the scope of this addon if you want to.
 
You can write a guide about how to set up Amazon SES outside of the scope of this addon if you want to.
Why? If the add-on is not reporting all shown (as via SES) bounces.. it's not a "guide" issue, but an add-on issue.
Especially when you consider that the ONLY site using the add-on is the very one that is NOT reporting ANY bounce via the add-on, but the Amazon SES dashboard IS showing bounces.
The simple fact is... the add-on is NOT reporting all bounces that Amazon SES is showing for the account.. and I don't care how many "guides" you write.. if it's not reporting them.... it's a wasted time of writing a guide and it is a failure somewhere in the add-on or with Amazon SES's reporting.

The simple fact is.. from my testing of "junk" email accounts... using a dedicated email account with a 3rd party hosting provider provided reliable bounces... while using this add-on with SES shows a bounce rate (via Amazon SES tracking) that is NOT reported via this add-on.
 
Why? If the add-on is not reporting all shown (as via SES) bounces.. it's not a "guide" issue, but an add-on issue.

No I am talking about something different.

I was quoting your old posting, that most users have a problem to set Amazon SES up, no matter whether they use this add-on or not.
And my suggestion or question was only, that if you see a need for a guide to set up Amazon SES, you are free to write one.

This has nothing to do whether someone might use this addon. It is related only to the basics to set up an Amazon SES account. ;)
 
The simple fact is.. from my testing of "junk" email accounts... using a dedicated email account with a 3rd party hosting provider provided reliable bounces... while using this add-on with SES shows a bounce rate that is NOT reported via this add-on.

nobody is forcing you to use this addon.

Either you try to find out the reason for your problem or you use a different solution. Simple as that. But only complaining and doing nothing does not solve your problem and is wasting the time of the people who try to help.
 
And my suggestion or question was only, that if you see a need for a guide to set up Amazon SES, you are free to write one.
Amazon itself provides a very decent guide to setting up SES... no need to redesign the wheel. ;)
Either you try to find out the reason for your problem or you use a different solution
And therein lay an issue that YOU have.. if there is a problem with the add-on.. it needs to be noticed and addressed... either by the original author or a competent 3rd party coming in and furthering the open source code... your attitude of "stick my head in the sand" does nobody a service.
I CLEARLY stated that using an outside mail hosting for bounce/unsubscribe provided (for me) a superior resolution.
I can't help if your intransigent attitude intrudes on reality.
 
Amazon itself provides a very decent guide to setting up SES... no need to redesign the wheel. ;)

Now you contradict yourself. See your posting #120 in this thread

commnet_amazon_easy.jpg

And therein lay an issue that YOU have.. if there is a problem with the add-on.. it needs to be noticed and addressed...

I do not have any problems so far :)

You can address whatever you want to and I only tried to help. Obviously you found your solution and are not interested resolving your mentioned problem with a different solution.

I can not help. It works for me. I can not tell you why this is not working for you. That has nothing to do with "sticking my head in the sand" and I do not think that this is the right way to communicate here.

Try to find someone else to help you and stop complaining and/or look for excuses. ;)
 
No, I don't "contradict" myself... once simply assumes a minimal level of competency... which, unluckily, many admins lack.
You can address whatever you want to and I only tried to help. Obviously you found your solution and are not interested resolving your mentioned problem with a different solution.
Considering that I am STILL reporting on issues with the add-on (which has a presumption that I am STILL using)... all it means is that I have had practical experience with an alternative method that is superior.
Try to find someone else to help you and stop complaining and/or look for excuses. ;)
Or how about more appropriately trying to figure out the issue that exists.
Head in the sand doesn't solve problems.... and you are a classic case of that.
I've shown SES graphs that reveal bounces occurring... and screenshots that clearly show that they aren't reported in the XF admin panel... so, awesome guru... what is your answer to the issue? :rolleyes:
 
Do you really think that you get help with this kind of attitude/behavior towards others?
Well.... what development have you applied towards the base code to resolve an issue that is reported? I know that I haven't, as that is not my forte. That lay elsewhere in the Linux server administration sphere.
You pre-suppose YOUR experience equates to all others.. and that simply is not factual
And there IS an issue that was clearly shown... having your head buried in the sand does not negate that.
Then help them and write an easy to understand guide.
Once more.. for those that are technically competent... the existing Amazon SES guides are adequate... for those that are in over there heads, I suggest either more research or actually hiring someone who knows what they are doing.

Care to take a stab at why I'm showing a bounce rate (specifically in July as shown by my screen capture) when the add-on log shows ZERO reports? And don't forget, the ONLY domain that uses that SES account is the one failing to show bounce reports via the add-on when the Amazon SES dashboard is showing them.
Here... let me give them to you again.

Screen Shot 2023-07-06 at 7.43.07 AM.png


Screen Shot 2023-07-06 at 7.43.30 AM.png
Now... care to compare where my ACP bounce log corresponds to the bounce reports provided by Amazon SES?
Care to explain how/why Amazon SES shows bounces on dates that the ACP doesn't show ANY information from (and no, once more, it's not a shared SES account, it's limited to that domain). If they are a hard bounce.. they should be listed to not attempt again... and I seriously doubt I have that many BS accounts with invalid email accounts trying to sign up over a 2 day period.

Note, my tests showed up in the bounce log.. even the one I did from Amazon SES to test. But those other days.. don't.

The simple fact is.. saying "it works for me" doesn't equate to it working for others... even when correctly set up.
As an example.. when I simply had the verified domain set up for SNS notifications.. it would not report... I had to specifically set up a verified account for my no_reply email address before it did so. And it seems at least one other had a similar experience.

I really wish someone (a solid XF 3rd party developer) would pick this up and pursue it.
 
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@Tracy Perry You've been using dedicated bounce & unsub emails long before trying this addon right? If so, do you mean that installing this addon caused increased SES bounce reports? Or are you trying this addon on a new server & forum?
 
@Tracy Perry You've been using dedicated bounce & unsub emails long before trying this addon right? If so, do you mean that installing this addon caused increased SES bounce reports? Or are you trying this addon on a new server & forum?
Was using SES and dedicated bounce/unsubscribe email accounts hosted at ZoHo.... and worked well.
Before this add-on use, the only bounces that were reported in SES also had corresponding entries in my XF ACP bounced email log.
Now, I am getting SES bounces shown in the SES dashboard that have no (other than the known test emails) corresponding entries in the XF ACP bounce log. Those SES shown bounces should either show as soft or hard bounces in the XF log.
 
@Tracy Perry have you tried disabling "enable raw message delivery" for this particular issue?
So it seems like we should start with that off.

Snoopy's guide also says to "disable email feedback forwarding", but I'm pretty sure that's optional, and can be used to also verify if bounces & complaints are working.

I just set it up with the default directions (without Snoopy's extra stuff), and it seems to be working correctly. The only issue is that complaints are being logged as bounces:
bounce.jpg

Which means I'll have to set all these to "1":
email options acp.jpg

EDIT: if you create an account with bounce@simulator.amazonses.com or complaint@simulator.amazonses.com as an email then it will show up as hard bounce instead of just bounce.
 
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One problem I noticed is that I'm not getting email notifications when I test send to the Amazon test emails even though I have "Email feedback forwarding" turned on.

I also wonder if your issue might be because Snoopy's instructions are to set up the feedback notifications for both the domain and the "send from" email (nvm, see below). My setup for Listmonk, which is working on another domain, is to have both the domain & sender email verified, with "Email feedback forwarding" enabled for both, but only the domain has the "feedback notifications" enabled.

Man, this is frustratingly complicated.

I want to send from "noreply@" but I don't want people to be able to reply to it, but it seems like I have to verify it in SES (maybe not!? See below), thus enabling people to reply to it. It's useless to have a "noreply" if people can reply to it.
With both my Listmonk account/domain, and Xenforo, I verified that I can send from whateveremailiwant@myverifieddomain without having to verify the sender email in SES.

The only use I see for verifying a sender email in SES is to be able to turn on email notifications - "Email feedback forwarding".
nvm, I removed "Feedback notifications" for the sender email and that seemed to prevent bounces from showing up in the logs.

I got the Attempt to read property "recipient" on bool error once, and then later on it came back a lot, even though it's not supposed to keep happening.

I enabled "Feedback notifications" for the sender email as well, and I'm still not getting bounce email notifications from SES, and it's causing that Attempt to read property "recipient" on bool error. Something I did stopped the errors but I still don't get the email notifications.

Enabling Raw message delivery didn't seem to do anything, so I turned it back off.

I'm using this
Free @yourdomain email using Cloudflare, an SMTP, and gmail: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNGcvz1Sc_8
Which probably makes things even more complicated.

I had to enable "catch all" in Cloudflare in order to get feedback notification emails from Amazon SES for bounce/complaints, but only the "complaint" emails come through.
bounce@simulator.amazonses.com shows up in Xenforo's bounce logs, but I don't get an email notification.

Endpoint - bounce & complaint:
At In the Endpoint section, type the following address https://www.yoursite.com/api/amazon-ses/bounce I thought it would be a good idea to split up the endpoints into "bounce" and "complaint" so that Xenforo registers them distinctly, but https://www.yoursite.com/api/amazon-ses/complaint(s) doesn't work (won't automatically verify).

Not sure if that's a deficit in Xenforo or this addon.


Testing:
I tried registering a new test account on my forum with a fake gmail, as described in Snoopy's guide, and it did show up as a hard bounce. So everything seems to be working properly I guess. I just don't get the email notifications from SES for bounces.

It's probably better to use bounce@simulator.amazonses.com instead of a fake gmail account since SES will count the gmail one against your record but not the simulator one.

I did a search and found:
If the user is in an awaiting email confirmation state, then it will not mark it as invalid email (bounced state.
So using a new user to test may not be the best method. I guess it doesn't matter whether it's a new account or an existing one. Tracy showed in the above link that it will change the user profile in the ACP "User state" to "awaiting email confirmation (from edit)".

I changed the email of an existing user, and I see that they're now greyed out in /admin.php?users/list.

I did some searches and found the following info:
  • We can go to /admin.php?logs/email-bounces, click on the bounce, and then look for User state to verify that the bounce changed the user's state.
  • List of "blocked emails" that bounced/complained: I was wondering if there is supposed to be a list somewhere of "blocked emails" that bounced/complained? IE: to prevent Xenforo from emailing them again? I guess Xenforo just uses their "user state"?
  • /admin.php?users/email can be used to view a list of emails.
  • /admin.php?users/search can list all users that are in an invalid state.
  • Exporting: Emails can be exported to .csv via /admin.php?users/list
  • Importing: it seems that an SQL statement to update the user records may be the only option. Sigh... complicated.

More testing:
I disabled "catch all" and "noreply@" in cloudflare (meaning that noreply@ cannot receive email), and "Feedback notifications" were turned off for "noreply@" and nothing would show in XF errors or bounce log.

I left the cloudflare stuff disabled, and turned ON "Feedback notifications" for "noreply@" and that caused the bounce to show up ALONG with 8 of the Attempt to read property "recipient" on bool src/XF/EmailBounce/Processor.php:106 errors.

But the error didn't happen again when I resent the email, but it did show up in the bounce log.

I then deleted the "noreply@" from the verified identities, and it still seemed to work fine.
Thus, my conclusion is that verifying the "send from" email is not necessary. BUT if you do add one there you also need to enable "Feedback notifications" for it.

This is contrary to my setup & testing with my Listmonk domain.

I don't know what the deal is with the email notifications, but I give up on that. They don't seem necessary anyway.
 
Anyone have any issues with the email changes in 2.2.14
 
Anyone have any issues with the email changes in 2.2.14
No, and I've just tested it sending to the bounce email address from Amazon
1706626599365.webp
 
Hmm, good timing to update this thread. The new XF release https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-2-2-14-released.219044/ reminded me that list-unsubscribe headers are now becoming mandatory:

In a move to safeguard user inboxes, Gmail [1] and Yahoo Mail [2] announced a new set of requirements for senders. Effective February 2024, the new requirements affect email senders who distribute over 5,000 bulk messages per day or have >0.3% of messages reported as spam. Failure to comply with the new requirements may result in Gmail and Yahoo rejecting message delivery to their customers.

For more information on the new mailbox provider requirements and how to comply, please visit the AWS blog [3]. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to AWS Support [4].

[1] https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/
[2] https://blog.postmaster.yahooinc.com/post/730172167494483968/more-secure-less-spam
[3] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messag...erview-of-bulk-sender-changes-at-yahoo-gmail/
[4] https://aws.amazon.com/support

Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

I checked the emails that are being sent out by this and they do not have a list-unsubscribe header. So people sending out more than 5k emails per month with this are going to start having all their emails sent to spam.

The setting that @Chris D mentioned in that thread seems to only be for when you have a dedicated email to handle it (instead of this addon).

We really need an active developer for this addon, or for XF to integrate it ASAP.
 
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