Hi all,
Being new here, and deffo not a computer whizz, I was reading something about Email Scanners and how they are not worth having because, IIRC:-
Viruses, etc. are only embedded in links or attachments and therefore only become active if you click or open.
Is this right?
Also, what if you don’t have Outlook or Outlook Express on your system… is there any point having the email part of the system active?
All info would be most appreciated…
You don’t have to click on a link or an attachment in a email for the email to infect your computer.
Drive-by Spam Emails Infect Computers Without Links or Attachments
Hi there,
Thanks for the response.
So email viruses are evolving more and more…
What about using Hotmail, etc.?
From the link:
Secondly, these schemes only work if the recipient’s email account is configured to display HTML content. By setting the account to display emails in pure-text format only, the HTML isn’t loaded and as long as the actual attachment remains unopened, the user’s computer remains unharmed.
That is one of the reasons I use Pegasus Mail for my email client. It doesn’t do JavaScript, and doesn’t open attachments automatically, nor fetch files from embedded links. Thunderbird and some others don’t either. Using a good email client rather that web-based email is safer in general.
A mail scanner will get you little if you use web mail. Since the mail is web-based, there is nothing for a mail shield to scan incoming. There is always the chance, however, that if you got “botted” (infections that can use your PC to mass-SPAM) that a mail shields like Avast!'s would catch outgoing bad mail, since it scans both incoming and outgoing.
Really? More private, sure, but I was under the opposite impression, regardless of this new emerging threat. Or do you mean it can be safer, if the right measures are taken, given the amount of control is higher with mail client software?
Any email client that doesn’t allow active content without the user’s express action will be safer than opening the same message in a browser, especially if that browser isn’t configured to block the active content; JavaScript and plugins automatically loading the message payload. Granted, not all email clients are created equal. Pegasus Mail cannot act upon JavaScript nor ActiveX content simply because the capability isn’t built into it. It also, by default, doesn’t open any executables at all nor retrieve anything from external links in the message. I believe that Thunderbird and The Bat! (or whatever it is called now) are configured the same by default, but I’m not sure as I’ve never used them.
Any attachment I choose to save from a message is created in a temporary folder where Avast File Shield scans it before it is written to it’s final location. Any antivirus I’ve ever run in the past has scanned the temporary file when it is created.
GMail web interface does have some of these things turned off in it’s default settings, and is protected somewhat by it’s malware scanning of all messages, so there is also some protection offered there. But that also applies to GMail’s POP3 and IMAP retrieval of messages with an email client. Other email account providers offer much the same protection.
This was the reason for me originally joining the forum. I was infected with a spam bot that was only detected by the mail shield.
As a result, I will always recommend the mail shield, regardless of mail usage.
Though, to be fair, I have all shields installed following that mindset. That’s just me though. 