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Overview

An inbound email address is an address that Apostra receives mail at on behalf of your account. You can give one to a partner, a colleague, or a system that sends you briefs or reports, and every message sent to it is recorded in your account. Each address:
  • belongs to your account, and can optionally belong to one of your advertisers;
  • has a purpose, which says what the address is for;
  • receives mail until you rotate or revoke it.
Inbound email is in a limited pilot for enrolled accounts. If your account is not enrolled, or inbound email is not available where you are calling, creating or rotating an address returns FEATURE_NOT_ENABLED. You can always list and revoke the addresses you already have.

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What an address looks like

An address has three parts, for example:
  • The readable prefix is your advertiser’s name, or your account’s name for an account-wide address, followed by the purpose. It helps a person recognise the address. It grants nothing.
  • The random suffix is twelve characters drawn at random, so nobody can guess an address from your name.
  • The inbound domain is a dedicated receiving domain. It is not the domain Apostra sends email from.
Apostra chooses every part of the address. You cannot pick your own address or use your own domain.

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Purposes

The purpose is recorded with the address and is part of its readable prefix. Today, mail for both purposes is handled the same way: each message is recorded privately in your account as a received-message entry, without its text. The message and its attachments are retained as evidence, but Apostra does not yet read, summarise or act on their contents.

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What happens to mail

  • Mail to an active address is recorded in the account that owns the address, and only that account.
  • Mail to an unknown address is refused. No message content is stored.
  • Mail to a revoked address, or to an address that has been rotated away, is refused in the same way, from the moment it was revoked or rotated.

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An address says where an email belongs, not who sent it

Anyone who knows an address can send mail to it. The address tells Apostra which account a message belongs to; it never proves who sent the message.
  • The sender’s address is recorded as an observation. It is not verified and is not treated as a member of your account.
  • Sending mail to an address does not give the sender access to your account, your Sessions, or anything else.
  • Treat an address like a private inbox: share it only with the people and systems that should send you mail. If it reaches the wrong people, rotate it.

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Who can manage addresses

Account admins can create, list, rotate and revoke their account’s addresses. Other account members cannot. An API key needs the interchange:admin permission. Apostra operators can also manage addresses on your behalf. An address can only be named after an advertiser that belongs to your account. Nobody in your account can see, rotate or revoke another account’s addresses.

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Rotate or revoke an address

  • Rotate replaces an address with a new one. The new address keeps the same readable prefix, owner and purpose, with a new random suffix. The old address stops receiving at once, so tell your senders about the new one.
  • Revoke stops an address receiving mail. Revocation cannot be undone; create a new address if you need one again.
Both keep the record of what the address received.

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API reference

Create takes a purpose (briefs or reports) and an optional advertiserId. List returns active addresses by default; pass status=all to include revoked ones. It returns up to take addresses (default 100, at most 500) after skipping skip, with the matching total, so page with skip until you have them all. The same operations are available to buyer and storefront accounts.