Just a little while ago, my firewall informed me that ASHMAISV.EXE was replaced by another program called avast Email Scanner Service and asked me whether I would accept this change. I said yes but I have misgivings because I do not recall any recent email from Avast notifying me of a program change. We use this computer daily for several hours to access the internet. Thus it is highly unlikely that this was an old program modification by Avast that happened to be picked up by the Avast Automatic Updates belatedly. The Automatic Updates seem to work flawlessly each time the pc is connected to the internet. So, is this change legitimate or not?
The change occurs when the program is updated. The last program update was released about 2 weeks ago, which means the automated update (if your avast! is configured to be updated automatically) might have occurred about a week afterwards.
Igor,
Based on what you said, there is reason to be apprehensive. My pc is indeed configured to receive automatic avast updates and it does connect to the avast server(s) shortly after an internet connection is established. It is also connected to the internet for several hours each day without fail. It is hard to imagine how the last program update could be missed for so long. Thus the question that comes to mind is how can I check whether my pc has been compromised when I authorized the replacement of ASHMAISV.EXE with the avast e-mail scanner service as described in my first post in this thread?
The automatic update are spread over the users database from one week or little more to avoid flooding the servers.
Compromissed? Do you mean infected by a virus? Just scan with avast! your computer.
Do you mean your avast! installation get corrupted? Just repair it through Control Panel > Add/Remove programs. avast will check if all items are legit and will change/update any of them that need it.
You don’t have to worry 8)