Identity Protector - known by the trendier name “GhostSurf Platinum” in the US - is a privacy protection suite that secures and encrypts your Internet connection to give an extra level of defence for those worried about issues such as online fraud. Also bundled alongside the main program is SpyCatcher, an anti-spyware utility that provides extra backup against snooping cookies and invasive malware.

The installation of this suite is a somewhat convoluted process. Firstly, it requires a 30MB download of version 2.0 of Microsoft's .NET framework (unless you already have this on your system). After that, the program has to configure itself with your Web browser, which is done automatically in the case of Internet Explorer. However, if you use a third party browser (we swear by Firefox), then manually configuring proxy settings is necessary. This isn't difficult, luckily, but it may confuse the novice user slightly, particularly as help is only given for Netscape.

Identity Protector works by routing your Net connection through its proxy. Your outbound data is then subjected to its security settings, which can be adjusted between four different levels: Normal (no protection), Anonymous (blocks personal identification such as cookies), Invisible (also conceals your IP address) and Secure (which also encrypts your data on top of that, resulting in an extremely secure connection).

Of course, some sites such as Hotmail require cookies, so Identity Protector lets you make exception rules to access these. We ran into some serious trouble, however, when using the Invisible and Secure top security modes. Basically, these plain didn't work, and just blocked all surfing to sites aside from those on the exceptions list.

We thought this might be an issue with Firefox, so we dusted off our Internet Explorer icon and fired this up, but we had exactly the same problems there. Tweaking and finally turning off our firewall didn't remedy the situation, so we could be sure it wasn't that interfering.

Delving into the help files, both offline and online revealed nothing useful, and technical support couldn't suggest a solution over the course of several e-mail exchanges. Therefore we were stuck with running the program on the Anonymous setting, and even then it interfered with the loading of one of our regular Web destinations. On the plus side, Identity Protector's caching seemed to speed up our Web surfing a touch.

SpyCatcher proved a thorough anti-spyware tool, picking up and eliminating a wide range of tracking cookies, and the suite's other extras are certainly useful. These include a decent ad blocker (AdArmor - it stopped most but let the occasional pop-up through) and a utility called TracksCleaner. This can wipe everything from your browser cache to the Windows clipboard and temp files, using the US Department of Defense's benchmarks for data destruction.

In terms of design this is a well rounded that which offers a number of protective measures. Whether the average home user really needs data encryption is arguable, however; not that we could get it anyway due to the problems we experienced with the top security settings. Of course, your mileage might vary, but given the problems we experienced we can't recommend this program.