Difficulty with email

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

For the last couple days, I have been having difficulty sending and receiving my pop3 mail using Thunderbird. When I first open it, it will query my accounts for mail, but will not download it. There are no visible errors, it just will not download. I can verify there is mail by using the webmail interface. If I try to send an email, I immediately get the error that “The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) some.domain.com timed out.”

I looked through the Thunderbird forums and the suggestion was to turn off antivirus and see if that fixes it. Which, in fact, it does. I go into Settings->Active Protection and turn off MailShield and suddenly I can both send and receive emails.

Now. With Thunderbird still open, if I turn MailShield back on, I can still send and receive. But if I close Thunderbird with MailShield on, then reopen it, I can no longer send or receive. But, if I leave it off and close/reopen Thunderbird, I can send and receive. Ahhhhhhh!

So, my wonder is if this is related to the last Avast update (6-18-15) or if it may be an issue with Thunderbird’s last update (6-28-15) or both?

Any ideas?

2

MailShield settings: outgoing mails should not be scanned, as that can produce timeouts.

3

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate your help.

I can deactivate this option, but doing so will not help the download issue nor does it address the underlying question of why this has happened at all?

**** Edit ****
I’ve just tried this.

I deactivated the outgoing mail scan and I tried to send a message but got the same timed out error immediately. Just for curiosity. I tried to send it a second time and I was able to send. This is repeatable, for me anyway. But deactivating an aspect of this software (which has been functional) so that it will function in an acceptable manner should not be the fix.

Anyway, this does not affect the download issue.

4

I had same problem and found a solution on Internet.
Go to Settings, Troubleshooting, Redirect Settings.
Clear all the port settings and check “IgnoreLocal Communication”.
Now I am able to receive my Thunderbird mails.

5

Thanks for the reply profbob2. I checked these settings and they are checked by default, I guess. So, no joy there. :frowning:

6

That solution was for a much older version of avast, before avast could monitor SSL/TLS email traffic.

If your email accounts don’t use SSL/TLS secure connections ? - You could try avastUI > Active Protection > Mail Shield > Customize > SSL scanning - uncheck the Scan SSL connections and see if that makes a difference.

7

Thanks DavidR, but my pops do use SSL/TLS. Thunderbird is configured properly for that. Feeling a little unhopeful about this.

8

Are you getting any error relating to secure certificates ?

If so you could try exporting the avast certificate (found in the same location and Image I last posted).

9

No cert errors, but I had tried exporting and importing certificates. No improvement.

There is no error about downloading mail. Thunderbird runs through the accounts I check but it happens very quickly and nothing is downloaded. IDK. Guess I’ll just live with this until it is fixed or I find a solution.

Peace

10

Hopefully someone can get on this as my email accounts don’t use SSL/TLS, so I haven’t experienced this problem.