Email Deliverability Troubleshooting

When a data subject reports that they did not receive a DSR email (for example, an export or report notification), use the steps below to confirm whether Transcend successfully sent the message and to help the recipient locate it. These steps apply to transactional DSR emails sent during request fulfillment.

Open the request on the Incoming Requests page and review the Audit Trail and Messages tabs.

  • Message Sent: If the audit trail shows a Message Sent event, Transcend received a successful response from AWS SES, meaning the email was accepted for delivery to the recipient's mail provider.
  • Report Opened: If the audit trail shows Report Opened, the data subject clicked the download link in the email. This is strong evidence that the message was delivered and accessed, even if the recipient later cannot find it in their inbox.
  • Messages tab: Sent emails appear in the request's Messages tab with the subject line and timestamp.

If an email appears in Transcend, Transcend successfully handed it off to the recipient's mail provider. After that point, delivery to the inbox (versus spam, promotions, or silent filtering) is controlled by the recipient's email provider.

  • Request banner: If emails to the data subject are bouncing, a warning banner appears at the top of the request: "Emails to the data subject are bouncing!"
  • Individual messages: In the Messages tab, bounced messages are marked with an Email Bounced indicator.
  • Send failures: If Transcend fails to send an email entirely, it will not appear in the product. These failures are rare and are treated with high urgency on Transcend's side. Contact support if you suspect a send failure and see no corresponding Message Sent event.

For consumer email addresses (such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook.com), there is limited allowlist configuration you can provide. Instead, ask the data subject to check the following locations:

  1. Spam and Trash folders
  2. All Mail (search by sender or subject)
  3. Promotions and Updates tabs (if tabbed inbox is enabled in Gmail)
  4. Search for keywords such as privacy, data access, report, or your organization name in the subject line

If the message is found in Spam, ask the recipient to mark it as Not spam to improve future deliverability.

For corporate email domains, your IT team may be able to allowlist the sending domain and IP ranges used by Transcend (via AWS SES). Work with your email administrator to:

  • Allowlist your configured sending domain (for example, privacy.yourcompany.com)
  • Ensure outbound filtering and secure email gateways are not blocking transactional privacy emails
  • Confirm SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment for your custom sending domain

The most effective step to reduce spam categorization—especially in Microsoft Outlook—is to complete Mail From verification on your Email Domains page. Mail From is the optional fourth DNS record set shown after domain, DKIM, and receive verification.

For setup instructions, see DNS Record Configurations.

Data export download links expire after the request is completed. If a data subject clicks an old link after expiration, the download will no longer work even though the original email was delivered. If the audit trail shows Report Opened on a prior request, the email was received—the link may simply have expired. The data subject can submit a new request if they still need access.

Contact support if:

  • No Message Sent event appears in the audit trail but you expected an email to send
  • Emails are bouncing and you need help diagnosing the recipient address or domain configuration
  • You need additional AWS SES delivery metadata for a specific message (available on request, but typically limited once SES confirms successful handoff)
  • Deliverability issues persist after completing Mail From verification and confirming no bounces in Transcend