Running avast! 4.6.763 under Win98SE. All is well.
For email I use only Hotmail thru OE6 – which I understand avast! cannot scan – and Yahoo and Gmail accounts accessed directly through Firefox or Opera.
My question is this: since both Yahoo and Gmail use internal virus scanners, and since I would use avast! locally to scan any downloaded file(s) before opening/running, what is the “Internet Mail Shield” doing, and can I live without it?
I have made no mods to my mail accounts nor added 3rd party apps like STunnel, nor do I want to! I would simply like to disable “Internet Mail” if it’s not really doing anything under the current setup.
Sorry if I’ve left anything out, let me know. THANKS
Internet Mai; Shield scans POP3/SMTP in almost all email programs, except Microsoft Office Outlook. It has separate provider.
For email I use only Hotmail thru OE6 – which I understand avast! cannot scan – and Yahoo and Gmail accounts accessed directly through Firefox or Opera.
As i see you are not using any of them, as you are working with Webmail systems, which are covered with standart and web shield - files you receive are scanned, so the mail providers theoretically are not necessary. But for max security you should leave them running.
In a few more words ;D
Even though you don’t use an email program or use web mail, there are trojans that come with their own email program and turn your system into a spambot. This could lose you your ISP account and often the first indication you have of this type of malware is avast’s mail scanner warning of multiple identical emails, etc.
The Internet Mail provider doesn’t use much in the way of resources and if not normally used it isn’t likely to increase/peak when in use, but provides a back-up in times like those above.
I use web based email but, for the very reasons David states above, the Internet Mail provider is activated on my computer. Unless your computer is very low on resources, you will never know it is running provided a spambot is not active.
In fact, I have all providers running except Outlook/Exchange because that is disabled on my computer.
But for max security you should leave them running.
