The GoldFynch PST Viewer is a free tool designed to open PST files locally in your browser. Once the viewer page is loaded, it runs locally in the browser. No data is sent to our server. This is achieved using a common programming technique of downloading code to the browser. You might have noticed this when using Google Sheets, where there is an "offline mode".
The PST Viewer is our lightweight viewer. It was originally built as an inhouse tool to inspect PST files. We released it for free because many of our customers needed to see the contents of the PST quickly, to make sure they had the correct file before paying to have it in our paid service.
The viewer allows you to see the contents of a PST file, but you cannot perform more advanced functions like searching, sorting, highlighting, reviewing, extracting emails etc. To perform advanced functions, you will need to create a "case" on the main GoldFynch platform at goldfynch.com. The advanced functions need server-level power and require you to upload the PST to our Cloud servers.
You can run a test to confirm that the PST viewer is not sending any data to our servers by any of the following methods.
1. Disconnecting your computer's internet. Once the PST viewer page has loaded (the page that asks you to open a PST file), before you open a PST file, disconnect your computer's Internet (turn off Wi-Fi, remove your LAN cable etc.).
Note: The PST file will need to be on your local computer drive, not a network drive.
2. Check Network activity in Chrome. Once the PST viewer page has loaded, open up "developer tools" in Chrome. You can do this by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+I, then click on the "network" tab. Load your PST into the viewer - you will see no network activity (like the screenshot below)
3. You can switch your browser to offline mode. This can be done by using an external tool like this Chrome extension.
Note: An internet connection is still required to open the PST viewer page for the first time, as PST viewer code still needs to come from our server to the browser, but once the page is opened, you can disconnect the internet connection and load any number of PST files.