As I use GMail for my emailing and the Mail Shield doesn’t automatically cover GMail, I’m wondering if it’s still worth running Mail Shield anyway. Does Alwil recommend running Mail Shield in 5.0 as it does Internet Mail Shield in 4.8 for some multi worm protection?
If you use GMail as Web application you access your GMail account from the browser so it is covered by the Web Shield and the Network Shield, not the Mail Shield.
The other option is to access your Gmail as POP3 using a mail client (es. Thunderbird). In that case you have to disable the SSL encryption in the mail client server settings because SSL is provided by Avast Mail Shield. Then you can go in the “expert settings” of the Mail Shield and “SSL accounts”, there you can see the list of mail accounts/servers that Mail Shield is monitoring and one should be GMail.
Just a minor correction but Web Shield cannot scan HTTPS traffics, which my browser uses for Gmail.
I incorrectly referred to worms instead of spambots in my above enquiry. And I don’t require Mail Shield to scan my emails as GMail scans attachments.
So now would an Alwil rep please comment on whether DavidR’s recommendation in http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=19677.msg165434#msg165434 re Avast 4’s Internet Mail Shield holds good for Avast 5’s Mail Shield too, to offer some protection against mass spambot attacks? Thanks
Hi greenhatch,
I’m not from ALWIL, but we did discuss this recently…and I would say that the mail shield is essential, for those reasons David mentions
The more recent thread: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=53892
-Scott-
Thanks spg scott, that’s all I need to know 
You’re Welcome
As you will see from the thread, it happened to me, and at the time the mail shield was the only thing which caught what what was going on, otherwise I would probably not eve have noticed…
-Scott-
Scott would you say the default Mail Shield settings are sufficient in my case?
Update 5.0.394----->>>5.0.396 smoothly from program built-in update module.