I installed avast free and I am trying to find out if mail shield is pointless if I only use gmail via Chrome web browser, or does it actually protect me? I’ve been hearing mail shield is an addon to programs like outlook or thunderbird?
No it isn’t pointless, No it isn’t an add-on for thunderbird or outlook.
The mail shield even if you only use webmail, it serves another purpose and one not everyone considers. It monitors the email ports, so should there ever be a hidden or undetected spambot on your system the first indication you may have of this is the Mail Shield monitoring the email ports. I would go so far as to sat you should keep it and bump the heuristic sensitivity up to High.
The Mail Shield is over and above and differs from the MS Outlook plug-in. Users of MS Outlook would essentially be using the plug-in not the mail shield as such.
For the most part the Mail Shield would be monitoring and using negligible resources as it would be dormant if no email port activity.
And how would that spambot have got there in the first place if the AV is doing its job?
I’m a bit skeptical
no security program have 100% detection and never will…
McAfee: Close To 100K New Malware Samples Per Day In Q2
http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks-breaches/240006702/mcafee-close-to-100k-new-malware-samples-per-day-in-q2.html
Just browse the viruses and worms forum and you will see how it is possible. One of the most common occurrences you will see is URL:MAL hidden malware (usually hidden by a rootkit) on a system trying to connect to the internet malicious sites to try and download more malware. Now the payload on that malware hidden by rootkit could just as easily be a spambot.
We aren’t going to beat you over the head to do this, we give you the information related to what you asked about, it is down to you what to do with it as it is your system and your choice.
I enabled it and used gmail, attached docs, sent emails, received emails, etc. Zero activity. Decided to uninstall as it’s useless in my case. If I used Outlook I’m sure it would be different.
Same goes for P2P, I download using uTorrent, and by default it’s disabled which leads me to believe Avast team wants it off for a reason (I think I read it’s super hard on the CPU due to how uTorrent has hundreds of little files).
And finally same goes for IM shield, I have no IM’s installed so it’s useless. If I decide to install Skype or something I’ll install the shield.
Thoughts???
You will get zero activity as webmail via your browser is not using email ports nor email protocol, so it is covered by the Web Shield. No one has ever said that the Mail Shield covers webmail.