As has been said, Avast! will not scan webmail accessed on the particular web site. It will only scan it if you use an email client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Windows Mail, or others to collect the mail from the mail servers. It’s kind of redundant since every web based mail service scans the mail themselves but it can’t hurt to have an additional scan with a different database. My primary mail provider is GMX and it’s also web based like gmail and scans the mail with Norton. So far it’s only caught two infections and none have gotten through to be later picked up by Avast. You never know though, it could happen.

I forgot to say that I collect my mail with Outlook Express and have accounts with GMX, Gmail, and Hotmail.