How does Benign work?
In the absence of a system such as Benign, email programs download new messages by contacting the remote server on which their email is currently stored and using a standard Internet protocol, POP3, to perform the download. Benign is a program that is run on your own computer and works by reconfiguring the email program to contact Benign, instead of the remote server, when downloading messages. Benign can intercept and monitor the POP3 session while it is in progress. When the email program attempts to download a message, Benign sends the download command on to the remote server, but intercepts the mail as it is sent back from the remote server. Benign then processes and filters the message before passing the message on to the email program. In this way Benign is able to perform the desired processing and filtering operations on incoming email regardless of the email program software or POP3 server software.
