Google notifications spamming our mail queues

[Bongo]

Hi , just reaching out here as Google support are not being overly helpful and was wondering if anyone else had come up against this issue?

 

We are a 365 school with Google Classroom as an add on. This is working pretty well during lockdown for engagement but we have been contacted by SWGfL as our mail is queueing at their servers them with thousands of bounced messages. The messages come from @chime-notifications.bounces.google.com and the attachment they have sent me gives no clues a that I can see of errors or non delivery codes. All the usual notifications from @classroom.google.com are delivered fine although 2 hours late now because of this issue! There are no other issues I am aware of with our email setup was has been in place for many years.

 

It may be that I am not seeing the obvious in the attachment so this is the beginning;

 

*** ENVELOPE RECORDS hold/58F2B20FAE ***

message_size: 9733 781 1 0 9733

message_arrival_time: Wed Jan 6 09:24:40 2021

create_time: Wed Jan 6 09:24:40 2021

named_attribute: log_ident=58F2B20FAE

named_attribute: rewrite_context=remote

sender: 3tvz0XxEUAIk01-4r2yB+MqDrLoMppyn55411z.t11tyr.p1z@chime-notifications.bounces.google.com

named_attribute: log_client_name=unknown

named_attribute: log_client_address=10.77.xx

named_attribute: log_client_port=41967

named_attribute: log_message_origin=unknown[10.77.xx]

named_attribute: log_helo_name=mail.tiverton.devon.sch.uk

named_attribute: log_protocol_name=ESMTP

named_attribute: client_name=unknown

named_attribute: reverse_client_name=unknown

named_attribute: client_address=10.77.xx

named_attribute: client_port=41967

named_attribute: helo_name=mail.tiverton.devon.sch.uk

named_attribute: protocol_name=ESMTP

named_attribute: client_address_type=2

named_attribute: dsn_orig_rcpt=rfc822;[email protected]

original_recipient: [email protected]

recipient: [email protected]

*** MESSAGE CONTENTS hold/58F2B20FAE ***

Received: from mail.tiverton.devon.sch.uk (unknown [10.77.xx])

by isp2.tc1.swgfl.ifl.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 58F2B20FAE

for ; Wed, 6 Jan 2021 09:24:40 +0000 (GMT)

Received: from EX2016.tiverton.devon.sch.uk (10.77.xx) by

EX2016.tiverton.devon.sch.uk (10.77.xx) with Microsoft SMTP Server

(version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256) id

15.1.1913.5; Wed, 6 Jan 2021 09:24:31 +0000

Received: from isp1.th1.swgfl.ifl.net (62.171.221.17) by

EX2016.tiverton.devon.sch.uk (10.77.xx) with Microsoft SMTP Server

(version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256) id 15.1.1913.5

via Frontend Transport; Wed, 6 Jan 2021 09:24:31 +0000

Received: from emx2.ifl.net (emx2.ifl.net [217.181.2.50])

by isp1.th1.swgfl.ifl.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C2A5F256DB

for ; Tue, 5 Jan 2021 23:56:39 +0000 (GMT)

Received: from mail-pf1-f198.google.com (mail-pf1-f198.google.com [209.85.210.198])

by emx2.ifl.net with ESMTP id 105NucAS020427-105NucAU020427

(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=CAFAIL)

for ; Tue, 5 Jan 2021 23:56:39 GMT

Received: by mail-pf1-f198.google.com with SMTP id k13so517327pfc.2

for ; Tue, 05 Jan 2021 15:56:39 -0800 (PST)

 

I am not overly stressed as this will go away as soon as we return to normal but it would be good to get the emails moving smoothly again.

 

thanks

 

Simon

[psydii]

That looks like your on premises Exchange server is bouncing it back to SWGFL's servers. You might want to check on your side what is happening.

[Koldov]

We use Google Classroom a little too and doing an email log search in the admin section of Google Workspce always shows me hundreds and hundreds of "@chime-notifications.bounces.google.com" - they seem to be produced any time any pupil does anything...

 

Here is my original post on the subject which might help, unfortunately the thread didn't yield anything useful (just 'turn off GMail'), unfortunately we now use it for some things so not an option. So it appears only some people have this issue depending on their set-up, but it certainly doesn't appear to be widespread, or Google Workspace admins haven't noticed or haven't looked... I did search for a solution at the time but there isn't much info out there, in fact the first Google hit for is now my EDUGEEK post...

 

Are you doing any sort of re-routing of the mail in GMail settings? I seem to remember that when setting up forwarding there was initially a rule with something about 'bounce notifications' but I can't find it now (I 'might' have deleted it)...

 

Ahhh..... here it is... this is the only thing I can find with 'bounce'... don't know if it's relevant...

 

 

 

It would indicate a delivery failure "A bounce notification is an automated message from an email system that there's been a problem with message delivery", but like you, I don't see anything to suggest it failed delivery in the logs.

 

We haven't had any complaints from email providers or gateways to say there is any kind of backlog or queue, but we are a small school, so just hundreds of emails not thousands... It still makes searching through the logs a pain!

[Koldov]

Actually looking into the log entry leads me to believe the email was actually in fact delivered...

 

 

So it is just a notification that a child has done something in Google Classroom...

 

The teachers don't actually use GMail as their email client, so I presume there are now just actually thousands of these emails sitting in their redundant GMail inboxes... I will have to do some more research...

[Koldov]

Right.... So a little deeper delve into this....

 

In the email log search for yesterday for '@chime-notifications.bounces.google.com' shows that they are produced by everyone for notifications of things like:

 

Added a private comment

Submitted late

New assignment

Posted scheduled assignment:

 

A quick vault search in a teacher's email shows the message in the previous post in there and lists the sender details as:

 

from: "no-reply+c7f16886"

 

Pretty soon we are going to open GMail to forward email to our O365 tenant and I'm a bit concerned our teachers are also going to be flooded with hundreds of emails about so and so 'submitted homework' so we may end up in the same position as the OP.

 

Any way around it, or is this just how Google Classroom works?

[paulkerton]

Staff have full control over what notifications they do, or don't receive.

 

https://classroom.google.com/s

[Koldov]

Thanks, but does anyone have any information on the OP's problem (as I realise I have slightly hijacked the thread)...

 

Or does anyone know if this is indeed what is happening (thousands of notification emails being sent) and if anyone can have full control over the notifications they produce to limit this behaviour?

[Danp]

I block all Classroom emails regardless of teacher preferences. Not once have I been asked why emails for it don't come through. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't know it should happen.