I don’t use Outlook, but rather web based email. I don’t use instant messenger, etc…
Do I need the IM, mail, and P2P shields, or are they just wasting my RAM?
The major piece of information missing is - What avast version are you using 4.8 or 5.0 ?
Given your mention of Outlook, my guess is that you are using avast 4.8 ?
If so avast5 has been out almost 10 months and avast 4.8 support is likely to cease at the end of this year.
Even using web mail - Yes, leave the Mail Shield running
Should your system ever get a hidden/undetected trojan spambot, the first indication of the fact you are sending out spam could well be the Mail Shield intercepting outbound email for scanning. I would go a step further and suggest you set the Sensitivity to High.
For shields that aren’t running other than having been loaded aren’t going to be consuming much in the way of resources unless they are actively scanning. I don’t use IM or P2P applications so I have them not just disabled but uninstalled.
I’m using version 5.0.677
Thanks for the data.
No problem, glad I could help.
OK for the IM and P2P shields if you don’t use the associated applications, they can be uninstalled. Use the windows add remove programs, Avast, click the Change/Remove button; from the next window, select change, now look for the shields you wish to uninstall and uncheck the IM and P2P shields (take care not to uncheck other shields).
The uninstall is preferable than simply disabling them as avast will alert that some shields are disabled. You would have to change the monitoring process to stop monitoring those two shields, easier to just uninstall, something that is easily reversed should you start to use these applications.
Welcome to the forums.
Like David said, let’s be fair, they won’t take resources…
I can definitely agree with that one…That is what brought me here 
An undetected spambot using my machine as a base for sending out those emails you get about everything you don’t want…The only thing that gave any indication that anything was wrong was the mail shield - alerting about too many of the same type of email being sent in a given time.
Scott
I assume here you’re referring to the Heuristics Sensitivity? Or are you by chance referring to the Sensitivity > Test whole files setting? Or both?
As a slight digression in the thread, although you can choose whether or not to scan inbound and outbound emails, it doesn’t appear to me that any of these Sensitivity settings can be set differentially for inbound and outbound emails…correct? Would differential settings for inbound and outbound emails be a worthwhile feature, or a completely unnecessary one? (I’m pretty new to using Thunderbird to access my GMX and Hotmail accounts, so I’ve had little experience with Avast! Mail Shield (v4.8 and now v5.0.677), and haven’t yet had anything flagged by Avast! So I’m just trying to learn how it works and get it set up the way I want… I don’t mean to hijack this thread, so if someone with more experience recognizes there’s more to my question than I realize, please let me know and I’ll just start a new thread.)
Thanks!