Email forensics & e-discovery

Software for investigators and legal professionals to recover, collect, search, and convert emails.

For litigation, government investigations and Freedom of Information Act requests, you need e-discovery software that can process large amounts of email data quickly and accurately. You also need it to find the “smoking gun”.
Aid4Mail has you covered:
  • Handle large amounts of email data with ease
  • Find the specific emails you’re looking for
  • Forensic analysis
  • Collect most popular mail formats and webmail services
  • Preserve crucial data
  • Save time with useful features
  • Get help when you need it

Handle large amounts of email data with ease

Aid4Mail has been optimized for speed and can work through terabytes of data without user-intervention. In tests with locally-stored files, Aid4Mail performed 6 to 10 times faster than any of its competitors!

With Aid4Mail Investigator and Aid4Mail Enterprise, you can run multiple processing tasks simultaneously, taking full advantage of your computer’s hardware and saving more time. For example, four tasks may all use the same input but different filters, and output to separate folders within the same PST file. All four tasks could be run concurrently, and unattended, while you’re working on something else. This example is shown in the screenshot below.

Alternatively, collect multiple source formats from a custodian simultaneously. For example, their Microsoft 365 account, Gmail account, local Thunderbird files and old EML files, merging them to the same batch of target PST files. Set the project up and let it run overnight so no time is wasted.

Collecting email from your custodians’ cloud-based accounts is made easy with Aid4Mail Remote Authenticator, a free stand-alone utility that they can download and run without installation. It enables the account owner to grant Aid4Mail secure, temporary access to their email service or IMAP account without providing full login credentials and without having a copy of Aid4Mail.

Find the specific emails you’re looking for

Collecting the right data, finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, is crucial. Fortunately, Aid4Mail’s search and filter features are second to none.

In addition to the basic folder filtering available in all editions, Aid4Mail Investigator and Aid4Mail Enterprise add date and keyword filtering, and the ability to create complex search queries.

These can include:
  • Fielded searches (including attachments and file metadata)
  • Boolean constructs
  • Comparisons
  • Proximity search operators
  • Deduplication
  • Wildcards and Regular Expressions
  • Externally-stored search lists (for large numbers of keywords or phrases)
  • Stemming (up to 24 languages) and tokenization

Native, pre-acquisition search is also available for mail services that support it, like Outlook, Gmail, Microsoft 365 and IMAP. This can greatly reduce the amount of data Aid4Mail needs to process locally, speeding up the whole operation.

Support for Python scripts means you can completely customize Aid4Mail’s filters and add complementary features. For example, integrate OCR into your search or scan images for nudity.

Forensic analysis

Aid4Mail Investigator and Aid4Mail Enterprise have the ability to search hidden places–often the location of incriminating evidence. These include double-deleted (unpurged) emails, hidden Exchange folders, and unallocated space that’s been forensically extracted or is part of an uncompressed disk image. They can “carve” out MIME emails from almost any file, including corrupt and unsupported mailboxes.

While these features are not unique to Aid4Mail, its performance is outstanding. In tests, Aid4Mail finds emails in unallocated space that other products just can’t detect. It finds whole emails when others often only find fragments. Even if you already use big-name forensic software, Aid4Mail can be beneficial by finding evidence that these other tools miss.

Collect most popular mail formats and webmail services

Aid4Mail supports most popular email formats, mail apps and webmail services including PST as both input and output. When available, additional metadata can be added to email headers.

Output formats for manual review or producing evidence in court are also available. Many, like PDF, HTML, CSV and TSV, can be customized: Header fields can be included or excluded, Bates stamps inserted, and folder hierarchies and filenames tailored. HTML exports even provide an option to create an online viewer with email and folder selection, and a metadata search bar to filter the email list.

Aid4Mail Investigator and Aid4Mail Enterprise offer additional features not available in Aid4Mail Converter. These include access to delegate accounts, output modification using Python scripts and the ability to “carve” out MIME emails from almost any file.

Here’s a full list of Aid4Mail’s supported mail formats.

Input:
  • Gmail
  • Microsoft 365
  • Outlook profile / Exchange
  • PST
  • OST
  • OLM (Outlook for Mac)
  • MSG
  • IMAP (for webmail)
  • EML
  • Mbox
  • Maildir
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Mozilla SeaMonkey
  • Apple Mail (EMLX)
  • Google Takeout
  • Google Vault exports1
  • Mimecast exports1
  • Proofpoint exports1
  • MIME emails in any file2
Output:
  • Gmail1
  • Outlook profile1 / Exchange1
  • PST
  • MSG
  • IMAP1 (for webmail)
  • EML
  • Mbox
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Mozilla SeaMonkey
  • PDF, PDF/A, PDF/X
  • HTML
  • CSV
  • TSV
  • XML
  • Plain text

1 Aid4Mail Enterprise only.

2 Aid4Mail Investigator and Aid4Mail Enterprise only. The file must not be in a compressed or encrypted container.

Preserve crucial data

Maintaining the integrity of email, after conversion from one format to another, is crucial to avoid spoliation of evidence. Aid4Mail’s email conversion engine is the most accurate on the market. It is fully Unicode-compatible and preserves more data, visible and hidden, than any of its competitors.

Visible data:
  • To, From, Date and Subject fields
  • Status information (Read, Replied, Starred, etc.)
  • Message text
  • Message formatting
  • Diacritical marks / accented characters (like Ă©, Ă´ and ç)
  • Non-Latin characters (for example 你好)
  • Embedded images and other media
  • Attachments and their filenames
  • Folder/label hierarchy
Hidden data:
  • Metadata in the email header
  • Server relay information
  • Digital signing

Here’s an example of how much better Aid4Mail performs with visible data. Notice that it has no problem with the accented characters in the first line, the embedded image or the Chinese attachment name at the bottom.

The next example shows Aid4Mail’s superiority with hidden data. Notice how much more metadata in the email SMTP header is preserved by Aid4Mail:

From: =?UTF-8?Q?"Bill Caff=c3=a9" <bill@aid4mail.net>?=
To: =?UTF-8?Q?"St=c3=a9phane Fran=c3=a7ois" <steve@aid4mail.net>?=
cc: =?UTF-8?Q?"'Lisa Gruy=c3=a8re'" <lisa@gruyere.org>?=
cc: "John Fire" <john@aid4mail.net>
cc: "Tim Sand" <tim@aid4mail.net>
Priority: Low
X-Priority: 5
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
Subject: Poem by Charles Baudelaire
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <001901cbcf87$707c25b0$51747110$@aid4mail.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:18:13 0100
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;boundary="Next_Item:_(A3CB49KFSA19)/1"

Conversion by a competitor (hidden data)

Return-path: <bill@aid4mail.net>
Envelope-to: bill@aid4mail.net
Delivery-date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:18:13 -0500
Received: from 131-39.62-81.cust.bluewin.ch ([81.62.39.131]:17353 helo=PrecisionT3500)
by centaur.dewahost.net with esmtpa (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <bill@aid4mail.net>)
id 1PqT25-00058l-7Z; Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:18:13 -0500
From: =?utf-8?Q?Bill_Caff=C3=A9?= <bill@aid4mail.net>
To: =?utf-8?Q?St=C3=A9phane_Fran=C3=A7ois?= <steve@aid4mail.net>
Cc: =?utf-8?Q?'Lisa_Gruy=C3=A8re'?= <lisa@gruyere.org>,
"John Fire" <john@aid4mail.net>,
"Tim Sand" <tim@aid4mail.net>
Subject: Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:18:08 +0100
Organization: Fookes Software
Message-ID: <001901cbcf87$707c25b0$51747110$@aid4mail.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-Priority: 5 (Lowest)
X-MSMail-Priority: Low
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0
Importance: Low
Thread-Index: AcvPhydgtD/Fiez1TJSn19MfhrGhJw==
Content-Language: en-us
Status: RO
X-Folder: Inbox     

Conversion by Aid4Mail (hidden data)

Save time with useful features

  • Simple and intuitive user-interface.
  • Hands-off processing. Large collections can take hours or even days to process. Once you run a conversion in Aid4Mail, it will churn through the mail without any further intervention. If there’s a problem with an email, it will try again. If the email can’t be processed, Aid4Mail will save a backup, log the issue and move on.
  • Command-line interface (CLI) in Aid4Mail Enterprise to automate email processing and integrate with other tools.
  • Familiar search operators, similar to those used by Gmail and Microsoft 365 (Aid4Mail Investigator and Aid4Mail Enterprise only).
  • Progress statistics and logs so you know exactly what worked and what didn’t.
  • Accessibility features like high-contrast mode, zoom and keyboard-only navigation.
  • Options to avoid pre/post-processing and manual review. For example:
    • Create PDF files directly instead of as a second step. You can have one email per PDF or combine them all together.
    • Add Bates stamps to documents as they’re produced.
    • Incremental processing: Run the same conversion multiple times and Aid4Mail can skip emails that have already been processed.
    • Remove the envelope around journaled emails.
    • Split, combine or restructure mailboxes and folder hierarchies.
    • Rebuild the folder hierarchy of Google Takeout and Google Vault exports.
    • Create custom filenames using unique hashes, email fields, Bates numbering, case information and more.

Get help when you need it

We’re famous for our customer support! All Aid4Mail editions come with:

  • Context-sensitive help with a description of every setting. Just press F1 in Aid4Mail and it will open at the right place.
  • A fully comprehensive User Manual, available in PDF and CHM formats for offline use.
  • Knowledge base articles on our website.
  • Access to our legendary Helpdesk who usually reply to questions within a few hours.

Who uses Aid4Mail?

Clients include US government and law enforcement agencies, top law firms, national libraries, prestigious universities, major banks, and international NGOs. Currently, half of Fortune 50 companies are Aid4Mail customers and the numbers keep growing. For confidentiality reasons, we do not disclose client names.

Try Aid4Mail for free

Take Aid4Mail for a test run. No charge and no sign-up. Just download and run it in trial mode for as long as you need.

Ready to purchase Aid4Mail? Just head to our Pricing page.

Client testimonials

Aid4Mail exceeds our expectations on the speed in which it can convert data. It can convert larger amounts of data in no time at all. I would say it’s at least twice as fast as the rest of our tools
Jon Hanna, ESI Manager – Advanced Discovery (USA)
Aid4Mail is a spectacular product. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to reliably convert email from one format to another, and then do it at scale the way you do. It really is quite an accomplishment.
Matt Coan, Sonian
I often recommend my clients utilize Aid4Mail to assist in the conversion, search, and export of emails to aid in their eDiscovery cost containment strategies. Aid4Mail impressively allows flexibility in handling the myriad email formats found on modern computers, and is one of my must-have tools.
Richard D Lutkus​​​ – Partner – Seyfarth Shaw LLp (UK)
I work for a lawfirm and we used your product to convert a MBOX file to PST. This software worked brilliantly, it even fixed corruption that existed when we attempted to do it manually or with other software. Thank you for that.
Gregory Kerr, Lubin Olson & Niewiadomski LLP (USA)

About Fookes Software

Fookes Software Ltd
La Petite Fin 27
1637 Charmey (en Gruyère)
Switzerland

For over 25 years we have been developing award-winning tools and productivity software. We also have more than 20 years of expertise in the field of email processing and analysis.

Our clients include Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, law firms, universities, and professionals specializing in e-discovery and forensics from around the world.

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