Avast and email

I recently installed avast 4 Home. I used the Mail Protection Wizard. I just want to be sure that avast is protecting me from viruses coming via email. When I open an e-mail the avast little blue ball in the system tray starts spinning. Am I correct in believing that the scanner is scanning my mail when it is being download?

Hi and welcome, Joey,

It may depend in what you’re using for mail. I use Eudora, and I’ll see two things: when I start up Eudora, the “main” avast icon rotates to indicate it’s checking out Eudora itself, the same as it would for any other program.

Then when Eudora checks for and downloads mail, an additional blue stationary icon appears (anyone know how to describe its appearance?).

Take a look at the headers of mail you’ve opened – Eudora should be adding a couple of new lines to the heads, one showing its data-version and the other reporting (hopefully) “clean”. If you see those, then avast is scanning mail just fine.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Mike

Hi MikeBCda,

It’s a start. I have Outlook Express for a mail client. But it only works with my Hotmail account. I have 3 other web based e-mail accounts: Yahoo and 2 with Mail2World. Yahoo and Mail2World does not allow POP3 service unless you pay for their premium service. I do not know how to view anything more than just the basic headers when using Outlook Express.

When I viewed a Hotmail advanced header, there was no indication that it had been scanned.

Does avast scan mail only when you use a mail client such as Outlook Express or Endora?

The mailscan icon looks like this:

http://www.babster.com/gifs/mailscan.gif

(for the life of me, I can’t make the “attach” feature of the YaBB work. The file is a gif and only 7k in size).

??? Ok, I definately do not have that icon in my system tray. So I am doing (or failing to do) something wrong. How do I set it up?

This icon only appears when email program downloads messages from mail server (if everything is set correctly)

Avast mail scanner does not check Hotmail account, because it is not POP3-based.

??? But Hotmail is the one email account that I do use in connection with Outlook Express. I can download all of my Hotmail with Outlook Express and when I sent out emails with Outlook Express it is routed through Hotmail. So are you sure that Hotmail is not POP3 based?

No,Hotmail is not a POP mail (except if you have premium one).
Outlook (Express) uses special interface for Hotmail webmail.