Friendly Relations System

The Friendly Relations System or "Friends" is a spam prevention system that will check incoming mail based upon a list of known email addresses. The Friends system can operate in the following modes:

• Kids safe mode - Only accept mail from known friends
• Keep track of Friends but don't block anything or request confirmation.
• Request confirmation from sender
• SmiteSpam mode - Request confirmation if SmiteSpam gives it a rating bigger than selected.
• Allow all mail through - Friends system disabled

Kids Safe mode

This is the highest level of safety. Mail is only allowed through if the inbound email address is in the list of known friends. If this is not the case the inbound message is bounced with a notification that this person is not accepting mail from unknown senders.

This safe mode message can be customised at the server level by creating a text file "kids-safe.eml" in the SurgeMail directory.

Keep track of Friends but don't block anything or request confirmation

This mode is most similar to "Request confirmation mode", the difference is that this mode does not hold messages from unknown senders and it does not send a message to them requesting confirmation. So it simply applies the friends list, accepting known friends and leaving unknown ones for another feature/filter to deal with.

Request confirmation mode

In this mode if a message is received from an unknown user an email is sent to this person requesting them to respond to confirm that they are human. If a response is received the original message will be delivered. On a regular basis a status report message is sent to the user providing information of the friends system and any mail pending delivery.

The Friends system may be temporarily disabled if an urgent message is expected from an unknown address using the "Un-Block" button. This will effectively turn either the "Request confirmation mode" or the "Kids safe mode" into "Allow all mail through" for a period of three hours.

SmiteSpam mode

In this mode if a message is recieved from an unknown user and it gets a SmiteSpam rating of more than selected then a request confirmation message is sent as per the 'request confirmation mode' above.

Configuration:

The friends system must be enabled at server level (g_friends_only). If enabled at server level, the following settings can be set by the user:

Message

The message sent to users to request confirmation that they are human.

Exceptions

A set of rules defining email that is exempt from the friends email filtering system.

Pending

A list of pending messages currently awaiting confirmation that the sender is human.

Incoming/Outgoing

List of messages received and sent.

Log

Log of actions performed on the Friends system.