Receiving Amazon SES notifications through email

Amazon SES can send you email when you receive bounces and complaints by using a process called email feedback forwarding.

In order to send email using Amazon SES, you must configure it to send bounce and complaint notifications by using one of the following methods:

• By enabling email feedback forwarding. The procedure for setting up this type of notification is included in this section.

• By sending notifications to an Amazon SNS topic. For more information, see Receiving Amazon SES notifications using Amazon SNS.

• By publishing event notifications. For more information, see Monitor email sending using Amazon SES event publishing.

Important

For several important points about notifications, see Setting up event notifications for Amazon SES.

Enabling email feedback forwarding

Email feedback forwarding is enabled by default. If you previously disabled it, you can enable it by following the procedures in this section.

To enable bounce and complaint forwarding through email using the Amazon SES console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon SES console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ses/.

2. In the navigation pane, under Configuration, choose Verified identities.

3. In the list of verified email addresses or domains, choose the email address or domain that you want to configure bounce and complaint notifications for.

4. In the details pane, expand the Notifications section.

5. Choose Edit Configuration.

6. Under Email Feedback Forwarding, choose Enabled.

   Note

   Changes you make on this page may take a few minutes to take effect.

You can also enable bounce and complaint notifications through email by using the SetIdentityFeedbackForwardingEnabled API operation.

Disabling email feedback forwarding

If you set up a different method of providing bounce and complaint notifications, you can disable email feedback forwarding so that you don't receive multiple notifications when a bounce or complaint event occurs.

To disable bounce and complaint forwarding through email using the Amazon SES console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon SES console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ses/.

2. In the navigation pane, under Configuration, choose Verified identities.

3. In the list of verified email addresses or domains, choose the email address or domain that you want to configure bounce and complaint notifications for.

4. In the details pane, expand the Notifications section.

5. Choose Edit Configuration.

6. Under Email Feedback Forwarding, choose Disabled.

   Note

   You must configure one method of receiving bounce and complaint notifications in order to send email through Amazon SES. If you disable email feedback forwarding, you must enable notifications sent by Amazon SNS, or publish bounce and complaint events to an Amazon SNS topic or a Firehose stream by using event publishing. If you use event publishing, you must also apply the configuration set that contains the event publishing rule to each email you send. If you don't set up a method of receiving bounce and complaint notifications, Amazon SES automatically forwards feedback notifications by email to the address in the Return-Path field (or the Source field, if you didn't specify a Return-Path address) of the message that resulted in the bounce or complaint event. In this situation, Amazon SES forwards bounce and complaint notifications even if you disabled email feedback notifications.

7. To save your notification configuration, choose Save Config.

   Note

   Changes you make on this page might take a few minutes to take effect.

You can also disable bounce and complaint notifications through email by using the SetIdentityFeedbackForwardingEnabled API operation.

Email feedback forwarding destination

When you receive notifications by email, Amazon SES rewrites the From header and sends the notification to you. The address to which Amazon SES forwards the notification depends on how you sent the original message.

If you used the SMTP interface to send the message, then the notifications are delivered according to the following rules:.

• If you specified a Return-Path header in the SMTP DATA section, then notifications go to that address.

• Otherwise, notifications go to the address you specified when you issued the MAIL FROM command.

If you used the SendEmail API operation to send the message, then the notifications are delivered according to the following rules:

• If you specified the optional ReturnPath parameter in your call to the SendEmail API, then notifications go to that address.

• Otherwise, notifications go to the address specified in the required Source parameter of SendEmail.

If you used the SendRawEmail API operation to send the message, then the notifications are delivered according to the following rules:

• If you specified a Return-Path header in the raw message, then notifications go to that address.

• Otherwise, if you specified a Source parameter in your call to the SendRawEmail API, then notifications go to that address.

• Otherwise, notifications go to the address in the From header of the raw message.

Note

When you specify a Return-Path address in an email, you receive notifications at that address. However, the version of the message that the recipient receives contains a Return-Path header that includes an anonymized email address (such as [e-mail]). This anonymization happens regardless of how you sent the email.