I’ve just started using Avast 4.8 Home Edition. In order to get some confidence that Avast is checking both incoming and outgoing email as I have optioned, I also specified that Avast should insert a notice for clean email. I see the notice in my incoming mail. However, I have sent mail to a Yahoo account and do not the Avast notice being inserted in outgoing mail. Is there something I am doing wrong?
I am running Windows XP SP3 and my email client is TheBat! version 4.0.24.
[b]TO[/b] a Yahoo account. The account is nothing special, just the Yahoo user-id which I use.
I'm not sure what you are driving at with the question about SSL and encrypted connection. I was expecting Avast to insert a brief text message into outgoing email to signal that the message is clean of viruses, in the same way that it inserts a brief text message into incoming email. I am not downloading the Yahoo email. I just login to my Yahoo account and access the mailbox using the Yahoo Web site interface. I should add that I have asked friends whether they are seeing a notice from Avast in email I send them. So far, noone has seen a notice from Avast inserted into email from me.
The Internet Mail provider works only with email clients like Outlook Express, Thunderbird etc. avast cannot scan the sent or received emails via a Web browser.
If you are sending and receiving your emails via the Web interface of Yahoo then you are definitely not seeing avast inserting anything at your request in incoming or outgoing mails. You have not seen avast insert any text - at your request - into an email you have received on the Web interface of Yahoo - you may well have seen the avast insert of the person sending the message.
The avast Webshield does scan your email activity in the browser in the same way as it scans all web sites you access, however you should ensure that you scan any attachments you download from the Yahoo Web interface.
When sending an email from an email client (Outlook Express, Thunderbird…) left click the blue ball, select “Internet Mail” then click “Customize”. Under the “SMTP” tab on the resident provider settings, insert a tick into the obvious checkbox.
As stated above, is not applicable to web mail clients (Yahoo, Hotmail etc.)
In the “avast! On-Access Scanner” Window, highlight the “Internet Mail” box from among the list of “installed providers” at the left. At the right under “Provider Configuration” click “customize…” to bring up the “resident task settings” window. Select the “SMTP” tab. There are two check boxes: “Scan outbound mail” and “insert note into clean message”. I have both these boxes checked.
Now, when I send out mail—any mail, I expect that Avast will scan the email message and insert the brief note. Shouldn’t this apply regardess of the destination, and that once the email message hits the SMTP mail server of my ISP, that note should already be appended to the end of the message?
Don’t be confused by my use of a Yahoo account as a convenient destination for an outgoing test email message. It should have no bearing on whether Avast inserted a note into the test message. I’ve sent test mail to friends as well and they have reported not seeing the Avast note appended. I used the Yahoo account so that I could see the results for myself without relying on a second-hand report.
At issue is whether Avast is actually scanning my outgoing email sent from the email client (TheBat!) on the originating PC. I wanted to see that note in the outgoing test email so that I could be certain.
By default, Avast will only scan and insert messages in outbound emails that are using smtp port 25 and does not require a secure (SSL) connection. Check your email client’s (The Bat) account on which you are sending this test message to see what smtp port it is using to send emails.
There is a special plug-in for The Bat, so that would be the best option for you. I though that would have been an option if the bat was installed at the time you installed avast ?
Ensure you have the bat plug-in installed/enabled, Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and select Change, click next and there should be a check box for The Bat, see image (mine doesn’t have that as I don’t have The Bat).
By using the avast plug-in for the bat it will allow scanning in secure traffic as opposed to being outside a conventional email client, the plug-in is working inside the bat.
The plug-in for TheBat! is installed and enabled. I was elated when I installed Avast that it recognized my email client and that it came with a plug-in ready to use. Avast inserts the text notice for incoming email when I download my ISP. In addition, during the download a tiny icon appears on the task bar. I was also elated that it didn’t seem to bother Avast that I download incoming email through a software proxy server. I have PopFile installed which examines incoming email and uses statistical heuristics to determine whether it is valid email or SPAM. After a short period of training, PopFile managed to classify incoming email with a 99% accuracy.
Nonetheless, I will go through the exercise suggested to verify that the plug-in is installed and enabled.
Out of curiousity, has anyone else tried to enable the Avast text notice in outgoing mail or uses the feature as a matter of practice? That might be useful to localize the difficulty to the plug-in or to Avast in general.
Another thing I could try is temporarily installing another email client (like Outlook) just for the purpose of sending out one or two test emails.
Obviously I have zero experience of the bat and how it interacts with avast, for instance there is an Outlook/Exchange provider in the list of avast shields, this too is a plug-in, but one from MS Outlook (not express) which would work in the same way as the bat plug-in.
I just don’t know if in the same way there should be a corresponding The Bat provider listed in the on-access scanner window.
Well if you have the plug-in the Internet Mail provider is effectively redundant to you as all email will be intercepted by the bat plug-in, so any thing you set in the Internet Mail provider will have zero impact. Other than if there was something else on your system sending out email outside of the bat, commonly an indication of the presence of a spambot.
You technically you could terminate the Internet Mail provider, but I would suggest you not only leave it but set the sensitivity to High, this would then be able to identify multiple identical emails being sent in a period of time (early indication of an undetected spambot as mentioned above).
The Internet Mail provider is not completely redundant because I can toggle the “insert note into clean message” for Inbound (POP) mail and turn on or off the Avast note for incoming email. My frustration is that I can’t get the option for outbound mail (SMTP) to work.
I didn’t think much about it previously, but the tiny icon for the plug-in appears only when I am receiving mail. Either the plug-in is not getting control on sending mail or the icon flashes too quickly for me to discern.
I still would like to know if the “insert note into clean message” feature works in general for outbound mail. Is the feature broken in Avast or might it only be broken in TheBat! plug-in?
You won’t get the smtp clean not to work (in the bat) if you are setting it up in the Internet Mail provider and using the bat with the bat plug-in working as it won’t be used, hence my comment about redundancy.
If the bat plug-in works in the same way as the outlook/exchange plug-in (that is my only reference point) then you can play with the settings in the Internet Mail provider till you are blue in the fact it won’t have any impact if you happen to be using MS Outlook and the avast plug-in for it.
So where are you trying to set-up this smtp clean note ?
As I said I have no experience of the bat and there is zero information in the avast help file on it. The tiny icon avast email icon only appears whilst scanning and that also happens for the Internet Mail provider.
If you use another email client OE (what I use) as you mentioned it should confirm that the clean notes work (if you aren’t using SSL email), but that confirmation doesn’t mean a thing if the bat doesn’t use the Internet Mail provider.
Personally other than advertising avast, I feel there is a very limited worth in having the clean note anyway, would you trust it if you received an email that had a clean note from any popular AV, I wouldn’t.