Hello guys, I’ve been using Avast for over 2year and I like it.
Today someone send me a VERY important e-mail with a .pdf…Avast scanned it and renamed the e-mail to:
[avast! heuristic - WARNING]
and I can’t read the e-mail and its not in my chest…Avast didnt ask me anything…
Now I really need this e-mail, cos I had some work to do with it and I wont be able to contact the person till monday, and I need it now! Seriously I don’t know what to do, Im running WinXP64 and winXP32 on another partition…I tryed to get the email on my other partition but I didnt store my e-mail on my ISP server so it doesnt work…
The e-mail is blank, its only showing my e-mail and the sender’s e-mail…no attachment …nothing…
Im using Mozzila Thunderbird and avast 4.7…I hope someone can help me!
Can you log on to your mail server via a Web interface?
If you can and you are fast enough - you may be lucky to find the email still in the Inbox on your server (that sounds unlikely from your post here). However, you may still be able to find the email in the deleted/trash folder on the server, in which case you should be able to move it back to the Inbox on the server.
Getting back to what happened with Thunderbird and avast …
avast, when it suspects a message part is infected would normally alert you with a scary popup screen along with sounds enough to wake the dead. Some folks decide they do not want this and have turned off those options in the avast interface and told avast just to take default action. With email this would be to just delete the infected message part.
avast cannot move messages or message parts to the chest since they are not files and there is no way they can be reinstated into every known email system on the planet - nor is there a standard program to handle them - every email package does this differently.
This is why, for myself, and my advice to those I support is to use the settings in Thunderbird to keep the messages on the server for a couple of days, so that in problems like this they can be recovered without difficulty.
Like David said: IF Silent Mode were enable WHEN the email was downloaded and IF the option was to delete it, THEN nobody would be able to restore that email UNLESS your ISP has a Recycle Bin feature (like GMail).
I feel the same. For me, Heuristic module is ON but the Silent Mode is OFF.
I doubt it, that isn’t really what system restore is designed for it doesn’t protect data like a backup.
Even an un-delete program would probably come up empty also.
@ heavnbr
The key really is to keep the interactive requirement (avast detects, you decide), so if avast flags something as suspicious or infected, you are the one that decide what action is taken and not an automated action.
However, emails sent to the virus chest often can be recovered as often they can’t be inserted into the database file they should have ended up in. Before taking any action record as much detail as you can, like who it was from what it was about, etc. so if the worst comes to the worst you can at least ask them to send the email again.
There is also a take no action option that will allow the email to be delivered, you do have to exercise extreme caution if you do this for obvious reasons don’t open attachments or click links in the email until you have confirmed the source, with those who supposedly sent it, from addresses can be faked.
Emails cannot be recovered from the chest. Windows system restore does not cover emails.
It is for eventualities like this that I mentioned retaining emails on the server for a couple of days very early in this thread. Then if an issue like this comes up with avast you have the chance to re-retrieve the message from the server and have a second crack at it.
I also had an e-mail deleted and the Avast message that this had been done. I also understand the how/why this happened, and luckily my lost e-mail was not important.
I saw a screen shot of settings that can be changed, but I can’t figure out how to bring that settings box up so that I can change to interactive!
Can someone send me the explanation of how to get into that screen for resident task settings?
Left click the ‘a’ blue icon.
Click ‘Details’ button (if needed, to expand options).
Choose Internet Mail provider at left, Customize button, then go to Heuristic tab of settings.
Remove the ‘Silent mode’ check.
