The Firetrust Company creates anti-spam and e-mail security solutions. Their “Benign®” creates a kind of mail firewall for your pop3 e-mail accounts. It is designed to neutralize the potentially harmful aspects of your e-mail such as viruses, scripts and web bugs, so your e-mail is safe to be received. It strips out the code in e-mails that would allow worms, viruses, and other harmful programs to start. It will catch e-mail borne viruses, prevent worms and viruses from spreading, and in general protect your privacy. It also stops Web bugs that can confirm your valid e-mail address and thereby compromise your security. Other products by Firetrust Limited are MailWasher Pro® and MailWasher® Server.

I currently use QURB® and Norton Anti-Virus® software to protect my system. Both do a good job at what they are designed to do. Norton intercepts all of my e-mail and scans it for known viruses, QURB® uses a ‘white list’ approach to filter all of the e-mails I get daily. It blocks unknown incoming e-mail from my inbox and lets me choose when I want to safely review the rejects. Benign® performs a series of other actions on incoming e-mails to ensure safe access. Depending on the security profile you select (I choose medium), it may block read scripts, change potentially malicious file names, block UUencoded attachments, remove scripting, remove META tags, block 1x1 images, block images that pass variables to external servers, and/or provide a host of other equally important protective functions.

As with all new software installations, I recommend you back-up first. Even if you don’t do a full back-up, I strongly suggest that you create a Restore point. In Windows XP, you can do that simply by clicking

[Start]>[All Programs]>[Accessories]>[System Tools]>[System restore] and then selecting [Create Restore Point].

When I installed Benign®, everything appeared to work, but when I tried to access my mail using “OUTLOOK®”, I got a server access error. I then checked the FireTrust web site. There I found out that the way Benign® interfaced with OUTLOOK® was blocked by Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). I had previously installed SP2. Firetrust provided a link to Microsoft, who has provided a ‘Hot Patch’ (KB884020), which can be accessed. NOTE – Microsoft will request that you “Validate” your operating system, but you can choose [No] if you wish and still get the patch. Either way, I recommend downloading the patch to your hard drive, before running it, so you can access it in the future if needed.

Once the patch was run, everything worked as advertised. OUTLOOK opened e-mails normally, but the dangerous scripts, potentially malicious file names, web bugs, and other bad attachments could no longer be activated when I read my e-mail. After reviewing a few (about 10) e-mail messages with out any obvious effects, the summary information showed over 400 non-standard HTML constructs had been removed, 3 external style sheets had been blocked, and 15 undesirable META tags had been removed. It also blocked 8 images trying to pass messages to external servers, 3 images that appeared to contain identifier information, 3 images that contained cookie information, and one 1-pixel 1x1 image. None of which would I have known about without Benign® installed. And these were e-mails from people and companies I generally trust. They may have all been benign constructs, but they were not apparently needed, so why were they there? What kind of information was being collected with out my permission? I have since received some e-mail from ZDNET where some of the images were blocked. But I could still get the gist of the advertisement, and it loaded very fast. At the bottom of every e-mail processed Benign® appends the following: This message has been processed by Firetrust Benign. My wife is a teacher and gets a lot of e-mail from parents of her students. This looks ideal for her system too. This product makes our e-mail safer!

Is it easy to use? Yes! Is it User Friendly? Yes! Do I like it? Absolutely!

I was unable to find it locally, but it can be purchased directly from FireTrust on the Internet for $39.95. They offer discounts for multiple purchases.

Minimum Requirements:

A windows-based machine running a pop-3 e-mail client. Works on Windows 95, 98, NT 4, ME, 2000 or XP.

Vendor Information:

Reviewer System Specifications:

Desktop Server: AMD Athlon 2400 (2.0 GHz) running Windows XP Pro, 1.25 GB Ram, 120 GB hard drive, 120 GB SATA Raid-0 Array, 64 MB ATI Radeon 7000, Lite-On DVD reader, Lite-On DVD Burner, Sound Blaster Live card, HP PhotoSmart S20 film Scanner, , SOHO 100/10 Ethernet, Firewire (IEEE 1394), USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, DirectX 9.0b, LogiTech Trackball, keyboard, etc.

Local Net: US Robotics router, Ethernet and 802.11g w/256 encryption

Laptop: Intel 800 MHz Pentium III running Windows XP Home, 512 MB Ram, 30 GB HD, DirectX 9.0b, 100/10 Ethernet, Firewire (IEEE 1394), USB 1.1, DVD/CD Burner Combo, US Robotics 802.11gWi-Fi Turbo PC Card

2nd Desktop: AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz running Windows XP Home, 512 MB Ram, 120 GB hard drive, 64 MB NVIDIA Geforce2 MX, NEC CD Rom, Optorite CD-RW, SOHO 100/10 Ethernet, USB 1.1, etc.