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Old 09-12-2012, 11:04 PM   #1
tuxmariner
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Registered: Sep 2012
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Recommended solution for reviewing and approving emails before they get sent


Hi All,

This is my first post on LQ after reading the forums for solutions for many years. My apologies if I mess anything up.

I'm the communications officer on a ship that has Internet access. In port, the crew has unrestricted and unmonitored Internet access. When we are out at sea however, the crew are only allowed to send and receive emails and due to the sensitive nature of our work all outgoing emails have to be screened before they can be sent to make sure confidential information is not being sent out. I would like to stress at this point that all crew members are 100% aware that their email is read before it is sent, there is no surreptitious monitoring going on! I don't like it, but it's the way it has to be.

The comms officers before me have used a very manual system of copying approved emails from one folder to another where they get sent, which is a bit nasty and prone to error.

What I am looking for is any kind of solution that will act as a mail server that crew send email to, but will let me review and approve emails before they are sent. If emails can be forwarded or printed (useful for gaining the captains approval in questionable cases) before they are sent that would also be good.

Ideally the system would run on Ubuntu Server 12.04 and would have a web-based control panel for reviewing and approving emails. I'm also looking for a solution that would allow all of the non-essential headers (everything but from, to, subject and date) to be automatically stripped out of the email.

I'm experienced with Bash and PHP and not against a little coding but don't really have the time to write anything from scratch.

I've done a lot of Googling, but haven't turned up what I need.

I hope this makes sense, let me know if you need any clarification.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers.
Tuxmariner
 
Old 09-13-2012, 06:30 AM   #2
chrism01
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You could have a look here http://serverfault.com/questions/270...essed-via-imap.
It sounds like Postfix+Dovecot could be the answer.
Dovecot has one file per email, so simple to deal with separate emails and it uses indexes internally if speed is important.
Depends on the HW and how many concurrent accesses you have.
Basically, you'd have 2 'mail servers'; one internal to the ship, which collects the emails & where you'd check the emails.
After ok-ing them, you could fwd them to the outgoing email server to actually be sent off.
 
Old 09-16-2012, 08:09 PM   #3
tuxmariner
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Registered: Sep 2012
Distribution: Ubuntu
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Thanks chrism01. I figured that I would need two mail servers like you mention. I am thinking that I would setup a webmail system (such as SquirrelMail) for the crew to use that would just communicate with the first mail server. This is where they would send and receive their emails, but that mail server wouldn't actually communicate with the Internet. Then there would be some kind of approval control panel that sends emails to the second mail server which does go to the outside world. What I'm looking for is some kind of software that provides that approval control panel. I looked at the link you provided but it doesn't seem to include anything like that.

I guess I might have to write something myself in PHP as I doubt I'm going to find anything specifically designed for this - especially with the requisite function of stripping out mail headers as well.

The hardware is not super powerful, but concurrent accesses will be very low (less than 50 crew aboard and I don't expect heavy mail usage).
 
  


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