EMAIL-006 critical Email Monitoring
Transactional email control and logging
Dedicated provider with dashboard access, bounce tracking, open/click tracking (or documented exceptions)
Question to ask
"Can you prove a specific user received a specific email last month?"
Verification guide
Severity: Critical
Transactional emails (password resets, order confirmations, etc.) must be fully controlled and logged. You need visibility into every email sent, bounces, and engagement.
Check automatically:
- Check for transactional email providers:
grep -riE "sendgrid|mailgun|postmark|ses|amazon.*ses|sparkpost|mandrill|resend" package.json .env.example 2>/dev/null
- Check for email sending code:
grep -riE "sendEmail|sendMail|transporter\.send|sgMail|mailgun\.messages|postmark.*send|ses.*send" --include="*.ts" --include="*.js" src/ lib/ app/ 2>/dev/null | head -10
- Check for email configuration:
grep -riE "SMTP_|MAIL_|EMAIL_|SENDGRID_|MAILGUN_|POSTMARK_" .env.example 2>/dev/null
Ask user:
- "What transactional email provider do you use?"
- "Can you see all emails sent from your domain in the provider dashboard?"
- "Do you have access to bounce logs?"
- "Do you have open/click tracking enabled?"
- If tracking disabled for some emails: "Which email types have tracking disabled and why?"
Cross-reference with:
- EMAIL-001 through EMAIL-004 (DNS authentication must be configured for the sending domain)
Pass criteria:
- Dedicated transactional email provider identified (SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, SES, etc.)
- Dashboard access to view all sent emails
- Bounce tracking enabled and monitored
- Open/click tracking enabled (or documented exceptions for privacy-sensitive emails like password resets, 2FA codes)
Fail criteria:
- No dedicated transactional provider (using raw SMTP with no logging)
- Can't see what emails were sent
- No bounce visibility
- Tracking disabled without documented rationale
Evidence to capture:
- Provider used
- Dashboard URL (for audit access)
- Metrics available (bounces, opens, clicks)
- Documented exceptions for tracking-disabled email types