SES's suppression list misses many bounces that otherwise get emailed to me via Email Feedback Forwarding. Do I need to worry about these? It would be nice if there was an option to catch these extras

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I noticed that Amazon SES's suppression list misses many bounces that otherwise get emailed to me via SES -> Verified identities -> notifications -> Email feedback forwarding. For example, I get 30 email notifications, but only 20 emails get added to the suppression list.

Do I need to worry about these extra "missed bounces"? I'm saving the email notifications from them for now. Is there some way for me to process those into a block list?

Also, contrary to google's bounce notification emails, SES's give very little detail about why the email bounced.

Amazon's docs aren't very good and don't mention soft bounces https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/lists-and-subscriptions.html#3-suppression-overview, so I'm wondering if soft bounces are excluded from the suppression list. If so, it would be nice to have an option to include them.

2 Answers
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Soft bounces are temporary, they can be resolved by attempting to re-deliver the mail after a delay. An example might be a full mailbox, the user may empty the mailbox and then the bounce will go away. (https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ses-understand-soft-bounces/)

Hard bounces are permanent and should be suppressed, they should not be re-attempted.

Assuming the "missed bounces" are soft, it should be fine. I don't believe soft bounces can be included in suppression lists automatically today.

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Chris_G
answered a year ago
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Thanks Chris. Is the "send feedback" option on the "suppression list" page the best way for me to request that soft bounces be optionally included?

If I am using a webhook to report bounces to a 3rd party client (IE https://docs.mautic.org/en/channels/emails/bounce-management#amazon-webhook), soft bounces won't be recorded there either?

Also, I think I verified that the issue is not simply soft bounces being excluded. Here's some examples of emails that should be hard bounces that are not getting included:

jsjsjs@icooud.com

example@ufl.edi (should be .edu).

UPDATE: I confirmed that when using a webhook, SES will send all the "extra" bounces there. So example@ufl.edi gets blocked by my 3rd party app, but doesn't get registered on SES's suppression list. Same for soft bounces.

Basically, SES reports soft bounces & domain errors via email notifications and webhooks, but only logs hard bounces on their suppression list.

User21
answered a year ago

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