I’m running Avast Home Edition, Build 4.6.744
Windows OneCare and Microsoft Anti Spyware, though I was getting the pop-ups before I istalled either program.
The culprit is obviously MSN Messenger, and I think it might have something to do with Messenger Plus, which I installed a while ago…it contains an option for checking POP mail using Messenger. Under the setting “Auto-Check Delay” in Messenger Plus’ POP Mail setup, I have it set to 5 minutes.,
In Avast, “Timeout for Internet Communication” is set to 120
I use Microsoft Outlook for checking e-mail. Server Timeout for my account is set to 1 minute.
The culprit isn’t obviously MSN Messenger (some malware could possibly use the same file name), it doesn’t have any reason to send or receive emails. so this use of an email port by MSN Messenger would to me considered suspicious. Do a HDD search for msnmsgr.exe and see if you can find more than one occurrence of it and where is it/they located ?
However, I don’t use MSN messenger so I don’t know how it is set-up so I can’t say for certain.
Are you using MSN Messenger for communication to chat sites, etc. using port 110 ?
If so that could be what is causing the timeouts as avast’s email scanner monitors the email ports 25, 110, for email protocol traffic if the traffic isn’t email protocol the email scanner won’t recognise it and this can cause timeouts.
I wouldn’t adjust the timeouts until you have identified why the timeout happens.
MSN Messenger combined with Messenger Plus (an addon to MSN Messenger) provides the user POP3 access to up to 5 POP email accounts (according to its website).
So on the face of it there should not be any good reason for Crabbyass to be seeing this timeout.
Crabbyass are you getting messages delivered from this account successfully using Outlook? Can I assume that you are using the avast plugin for Outlook?
Were the previous timeouts you have seen all related to msnmsgr.exe?
I have never had a problem sending or recieving messages through outlook, and Messenger Plus has always been succesfully at informing me when I have a new message. Yes, I’m using the Avast “add-in” for Outlook.
Every single timeout I have recieved as been related to msnmsgr.exe.
Also, it seems I only get Connection Timeouts when my computer is idle, that is when the screen saver kicks in. I’ve never seen one pop-up while I’m sitting at the computer. I have, however, received a number of timeouts while playing a game in fullscreen (Call of Duty, for example).
I am sure that not everyone will agree with what I am about to say but … here goes.
I cannot recall a single case reported in this forum where a timeout on port 110 (ie on inbound scanning) has ever been associated with a real malware or virus threat.
I find it hard to believe that malware is going to be connecting to a POP3 server to receive its malicious instructions via email and then sit there for more than 120 seconds doing it.
So to all intents and purposes I would suggest that the Mail Scanner timeout on port 110 is a function that should be turned off by default and selectable by anyone really wanting it.
I would not suggest unchecking the timeout in the Internet Mail scanner because we have seen too many cases where malware in the form of email spambots have been detected on systems only because of the avast timeout for port 25. These spambots generate huge numbers of spam email without the system owner’s knowledge.
In your case Crabbyass, MSN Messenger Plus is making the port 110 connection just to get the list of messages on the server to see if there are any new messages and to alert you. It does not read the actual messages and retrieving the message list poses no threats to your system so there is no benefit in having this particular process scanned by the Internet Mail scanner.
So for you I suggest that you exclude MSN Messenger from being scanned by the Internet Mail scanner. To do this add the following line to the [MailScanner] section of avast4.ini