Email suppression list handling

[Paul_King]

Hi, just wondering if there is an effective way to automate the handling of email suppression where user accounts have addresses that have become problematic for one reason or another?

I am using Mailgun for sending mail list type messages for those that want it, yet according to Mailgun stats around 16% of these users have email addresses that are being suppressed.

That is fine in terms of preventing ongoing reputational damage to the forum email domain, but does nothing to rectify the underlying problem - there is no direct feedback to affected users letting them know there even is a problem.

Where a forum is used intermittently anyway, lack of emails from it seldom elicits follow up from users - it simply slips out of sight and out of mind.

What would help is an automated way to use, say, a standard csv file of email suppressed users once a month (Mailgun offers this & presumably other providers do as well) and to email each of these users via their nominated secondary address (if one was provided) that their primary address needs to be updated.

Affected users should ideally also be prompted to update their email address whenever logging in to the web based forum, and in the meantime should have all email sending functionality globally switched off (with an associated status warning to any user inspecting their user preferences)

How is the above normally achieved?

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I think you’re looking for Handling bouncing e-mails

[jeffbyrnes]

While I appreciate the link to my message, I updated @zogstrip’s original, and it should be accurate:

Configure VERP to handle bouncing e-mails

Setting up bounces handling Discourse uses the Variable envelope return path (VERP) technique to handle bouncing e-mails. To enable VERP, set the “reply by email address” site setting with an email address template that uses the + sign. The default of replies+%{reply_key}@discourse.example.com … works fine. If you are using your own or your company’s email server, then, that’s it Your discourse instance must be able to receive email sent to this address. This should work via POP, bu…

@Paul_King, I hope this helps!

[Paul_King]

Thanks for your replies!

MailGun already detects bounced emails at their end, suppressing those addresses in subsequent mail outs.
Is this analogous to the Discourse VERP process alluded to in that link ?

MailGun’s suppression of problematic email seems to be mandatory (they appear to want to protect their own reputation)

Would any purpose be served by trying to implement a VERP process within Discourse if there is no direct way for bounced email notifications to get past Mailgun and to reach Discourse?

I was wondering about another way to complete the bounced email feedback loop from MailGun back to Discourse; i.e. by passing on the suppressed address list that Mailgun generates, so that Discourse administrators, the users concerned and/or some sort of automated mitigation process are made aware and can attempt to resolve/restore delivery.

Am I making any sense? Do I have the wrong end of the stick?