Topic: Disable mail to a user from an external network

[manegar]

Hi All,
Please advise me with the following requirements:

1. Blocking mails to Users/Group from external network.
2. Blocking Internal/External mails from users to a particular group.

I am running SME 7.4 in Server Only Mode.

Email Settings are:
POP3 Server Access: Allow both POP3 and POP3S
IMAP Server Access: Allow private and public (secure IMAPS)
Webmail Access: Allow HTTPS (secure)


 I have tried the following command to block mails to users/group from external network which was in http://wiki.contribs.org/Email#Disable_mail_to_a_user_from_an_external_network  , but still I can access the mails from the external network.

db accounts setprop groupname/username Visible internal
signal-event email-update


Thanks in advance,

Avi

[JoshuaR]

I have tried the following command to block mails to users/group from external network which was in http://wiki.contribs.org/Email#Disable_mail_to_a_user_from_an_external_network  , but still I can access the mails from the external network.

db accounts setprop groupname/username Visible internal
signal-event email-update

You did put the user or group name in

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db accounts setprop groupname/username Visible internal  and not just leave it as 'groupname/username' right?

[manegar]

You did put the user or group name in
db accounts setprop groupname/username Visible internal

Yes I did, I have checked with both username as well as groupname.

[JoshuaR]

I have tried the following command to block mails to users/group from external network which was in http://wiki.contribs.org/Email#Disable_mail_to_a_user_from_an_external_network  , but still I can access the mails from the external network.

and just to double-check, how do you mean you can still access the mail externally? Are you trying to stop SME from receiving the emails, or are you trying to stop the users from accessing the emails from an external location?

edit:
and if you do a

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db accounts show does it show the property for your user or group as

Code: [Select]

Visible=internal ?

[manegar]

and just to double-check, how do you mean you can still access the mail externally? Are you trying to stop SME from receiving the emails, or are you trying to stop the users from accessing the emails from an external location?

I am just trying to stop users to access emails from external locations. For example, only top management of the company needs to access mails from external location and all other users should not access the mails. So I have created a group called "noaccess" and added all users except some users who needs to access mails from external location

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db accounts setprop noaccess Visible internal
signal-event email-update

.

[JoshuaR]

Code: [Select]

db accounts setprop noaccess Visible internal
signal-event email-update
This does not prevent 'access' to the email accounts, this prevents the email accounts from receiving email from external networks.

Look at http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter13#E-mail_Access
to stop users from accessing their email account from outside the local network.
On second thoughts that's at a global level

[manegar]

Code: [Select]

db accounts setprop noaccess Visible internal
signal-event email-update
This does not prevent 'access' to the email accounts, this prevents the email accounts from receiving email from external networks.

Look at http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter13#E-mail_Access
to stop users from accessing their email account from outside the local network.
On second thoughts that's at a global level

Thanks for info,well is there anyway we can prevent access to a user or a group from external networks ? can we create different access levels of external network ?

[JoshuaR]

how many users need to access their accounts externally? If it's only a few
a round-about way of doing it might be to change these settings to private: http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter13#E-mail_Access

and then set up a vpn for the few users who need to pop their emails remotely?

So essentially they'd be still accessing their emails locally--through the vpn connection...
Someone else might have a better solution. 

[CharlieBrady]

Someone else might have a better solution. 

Unlikely. Yours sounds like the appropriate solution (if you really must do anything - I don't know why you want to stop people from accessing *their* email).

[manegar]

and then set up a vpn for the few users who need to pop their emails remotely?

As of now I am using my firewall vpn client and I just wanted to check if there is any option available in SME to minimize my VPN client cost. Thanks for the advise JoshuaR.

(if you really must do anything - I don't know why you want to stop people from accessing *their* email)

Well it is our company policy, as there will be classified data which should not go out of the company and email is one such medium.

Can anybody throw some light on my second point

2. Blocking Internal/External mails from users to a particular group.

what I mean to say is that I have a group where all the users are in that group and it is used to communicate HR related circulars/memos to all the employees. Recently some of the users started sending out forwarded messages to that group mail id, I want to stop this kind of usage.

Kindly help me with this.

Thanks

avi