975938 - Production handling of reply-to emails for FxA

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Cloud Services :: Server: Firefox Accounts, defect)

Description

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

Our current server setup sends FxA verification emails from "[e-mail]".  Is this the desired final "From" address, and do we need to do anything special with it?

Is it worth setting up something to listen at this address for bounces, complaints, feedback etc, at least initially?  (I sent a test message to this address to see what would happen...so far it's just been sent with no reply)

Maybe we already have something setup that I don't know about; maybe we don't need anything there once we get proper notification handling per https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/issues/230; worth explicitly considering and clarifying either way

Comment 1

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Seems to me that maybe we shouldn't actually use a noreply address

http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/transactional-email/html/#section-best-practices

> (I sent a test message to this address to see what would happen...so far it's just been sent with no reply)

This is because we have no MX (mail) records defined for accounts.firefox.com

If we want to use a "from" address which can accept email we'll need to :
* come up with what that address is ([e-mail])
* identify a mail provider which we can use (mozilla mailman, mozilla's mta, something else?)
* update our DNS to point to the provider
* update our configs to use the new from address

Comment 2

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

My test message came back this morning with this less-than-awesome experience:

"""
Delayed Mail (still being retried)

This is the mail system at host gateway1.nyi.mail.srv.osa.

####################################################################
# THIS IS A WARNING ONLY.  YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE. #
####################################################################

Your message could not be delivered for more than 6 hour(s).
It will be retried until it is 1 day(s) old.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

                   The mail system

<[e-mail]>: connect to
    accounts.firefox.com[54.200.60.33]:25: Connection timed out
"""

Which I guess is expected since nothing is configured to accept mail here.

Also I found this relevant discussion: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-content-server/issues/527

Comment 3

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

ping ckarlof for high-level direction and triage

Comment 4

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

(In reply to Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly] from comment #3)
> ping ckarlof for high-level direction and triage

The main thing is that we shouldn't look like a bunch of amateurs. 

Gene, I like all that you said, including that nice article.

> * come up with what that address is ([e-mail])

[e-mail]

> * identify a mail provider which we can use (mozilla mailman, mozilla's mta, something else?)

No idea. Does anyone in ops know about this? Can we reach out to IT? Quick and dirty is we can set up an EC2 instance that runs postfix or qmail. Not really cost effective long term. To start with, we can forward these to an internal list. 

> * update our configs to use the new from address

https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/issues/589

Can we target this for around Beta (late march)? Beta is when we're going to start getting significant numbers of users and this would be an additional way to gather feedback.

Comment 5

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

(In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly] from comment #3) 
> > * come up with what that address is ([e-mail])
> 
> [e-mail]

I'm changing my mind on this. This suggests we might be listening, and I don't think we will be.

Instead, I propose: [e-mail]

I also think we should add a message to the emails stating this message was sent by an automated system, and if the user has a support issue she should visit an appropriate place. I'll file an issue for this in the content server.

Comment 6

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

Summarizing the priorities agreed to by gene, warner, and me:

1) Have the bounce and reply emails go *somewhere* reasonably safe so the user doesn't see delivery errors
2) Be able to get metrics on the volume and type of these emails (e.g., bounce, spam, replies)
3) Be able to actually view these emails to get insight into the types of problems users are having

Comment 7

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

New email address is now setup and tested. Next up, changing the configured value and seeing it deployed.

Comment 8

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

I've updated the provisioning code and this change will be present in the next stacks that go out

https://github.com/mozilla-services/puppet-config/pull/228

Comment 9

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

This new from email address is live (and has been for a few weeks). Bounces and replies are going to a distribution list with a few people on it.

1) complete
2) rudimentarily achievable through email
3) complete

I'll close this out. If there's a desire/priority to moving forward on the metrics piece through some other means, feel free to re-open