AWS-SES: Handling Bounces for Invalid ISPs

I have created an emailing system using Amazon's Simple Email Service (SES) that handles bounces to invalid messages with their Notification(SNS) and Queue(SQS) services. Sending emails to valid addresses work as expected, but I am running into a problem when trying to report bounces.

There are 2 bounce situations: the first one works and the second one does not.

1) Emailing a fake address at an existing ISP (for eg: [email protected] or [email protected]) - correctly bounces and sends a Notification to my Queue through SNS

2) After emailing a fake address at a fake ISP (for eg: [email protected]), the Queue never receives a bounce from SNS.

However, the bounce is recognize on some level by AWS because it is added to the Bounce-Statistics Graph in the console.

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I can't remove these addresses from my email list if I am never notified that email has bounced.

After doing a lot of research, I initially thought that it was a problem with the AWS Suppression List But I dont think that's possible since i have tried sending to email addresses that were very unlikely to have been used in the past 12 days.

My other thought, is this is a soft bounce, and the system will only be updated if it continues to bounce for the next 12 hours.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

Solution

I receive bounce notifications from SES for invalid domains.

The difference is that the bounce is not immediate since there is no responding mail server. SES will hold the mail and retry several times before declaring it a bounce. I receive the bounce notification 12-16 hours after the initial message was sent if the domain is invalid. Usually from a misspelling.

Real Bounce Results

On 4/26 3:53 pm I sent a mail to an invalid domain ([email protected] instead of [email protected])

On 4/27 6:17 am I received the bounce from SES.