Installed avast home edition.
I am unable to send emails through outlook express, the technician from sympatico, said that I will not be able to use outlook express with the avast antivirus.
Would appreciate any info regarding the above.
Windows XP
Thank you
What is your firewall ?
The Tech at Sympatico may be correct depending on a couple of things but there are things that can be done to rectify that.
Does sympatico use SSL (secure encrypted email) ?
Check your email account settings (Tools, Accounts, select the account/s, Properties, Advanced tab) and tell me the ports used and if SSL is ticked, see image.
If it does require SSL, avast nor any other AV can scan encrypted content (that is the point). However, you could use a third party application called STunnel, we will cross that bridge if we need to later.
If it doesn’t require SSL, ensure your firewall allows ashMaiSv.exe internet access.
Thanks for your quick response
on page is the following
This server requires a secure connection (SSL) there is no check mark in the box.
Are the ports the same as the ones in the image ?
If so, answer the firewall question ?
If it doesn't require SSL, ensure your firewall allows ashMaiSv.exe internet access.
Page as the following
Outgoing mail SMTP 25
This server requies a secure connection (SSL)
The box has a check mark
Incoming mail (POP3) 995
This server requires a secure connection SSL
The box has a check mark
This has come up before. avast does not expect port 25 (industry standard for outgoing SMTP mail) to be used for a secure connection and avast prevents the secure connection being made. Very few servers use port 25 for secure connections but it is not entirely unknown and sympatico is one of them.
You could try to see if either ports 465 or 587 work with sympatico for SMTP with SSL. There is a sort of unofficial standard for SSL on port 465 and TLS on 587. (Just as port 995 is the unofficial standard for a secure POP connection for receiving email).
If neither of these work then I regret that the only solution will be to go to the Internet Mail scanner (SMTP tab) and uncheck outbound mail scanning.
For a previous discussion see:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=22372.msg185591#msg185591
Thank you David for your help.
Thank you David with your help the outlook express seems to be working fine now.
Thanks again.
Your welcome but I’m not sure we have it cracked yet.
I somewhat confused by it working if as Alan mentions sympatico requires SSL. the port 995 of your pop3 inbound won’t be scanned as avast only scans port 25, 110, 119 and 143 all standard non-SSL protocols.
Have you changed any ports as Alan suggested, if so what (?) it may appear that things are working because you can receive email, but it might be that it isn’t being scanned by avast. Check the Scanned count: and Last scanned: fileds in the Internet Mail provider, they should constantly update if avast is scanning your email.
Hi David & Alan
I spoke to the chap at my local computer store, (they were the ones that recommended Avast)
He said to click on the the avast icon and then click on the customize in the Internet mail and turn of scan outgoing mail, then click on outlook exchange and also turn off outbound mail scan.
I am able to use outlook after doing this.
You had mentioned perhaps incoming mail was not being scanned
The internet mail page reads the following
Last scanned blank
Last infected blank
scan count 0
infected count 0
tase name Resident protection
under customize
UNDER POP It does have a check mark to scan incoming mail.
Outbound scanning provides a useful function other than basically scanning the email you send, it can also detect emails that you ‘don’t’ send, sent by an undetected trojan. So I would recommend you have the outbound scan enabled and the sensitivity set to High. However, this may not work for you as it is likely to get involved with your use of the SMTP port 25 for SSL email.
So you may have to live with no outbound check or do as Alan suggested try either port 465 or 587, if it works then you could enable outbound scanning as avast doesn’t scan those ports and any traffic using port 25 would be scanned.
Based on the information you gave earlier the inbound email port of 995 isn’t scanned by avast as it isn’t one of the email ports it can scan, hence the zero totals and no lasted scanned.
The Internet Mail appears to be working but it isn’t scanning anything, because it can’t scan SSL email and you disabled outbound scans, it doesn’t scan port 995 so no inbound email is scanned.
In your current set-up the Internet Mail provider is effectively redundant.
Even though with your setup the Internet Mail scanner is not scanning you inbound or outbound emails I agree with David that there is value in keeping the Internet Mail scanner running with the sensitivity set to high. Even with the SMTP mail scanning unchecked the heuristics section of the scanner will still detect any spam bot that infects your your system and starts to use your system to send out spam emails and it will consume very little resources of your system.
It isn’t scanning outbound because teloiv has been advised to disable it and I assume he has.
The only problem with enabling outbound scanning is over coming the fact that port 25 is still being used for SSL email which would cause a hiccup when sending his SSL email. So without using STunnel or teloiv being able to use the SSL smtp port 465 or TLS port 587 then he would have to leave outbound scanning disabled.
Not virus scanning outbound SMTP is no big deal. It will not stop the heuristics detecting a spam bot.
If it was found that the other ports would work for sympatico then it would mean it would be possible for other mail accounts to be scanned if they were using port 25 for non-secure SMTP mail; but if sympatico will only work with secure SMTP and port 25 then the OP has no choice but to turn off the outbound scanning. STunnel will avail nothing to change the port 25 issue since STunnel will need to use port 25 to get to the mail server securely so avast must not be scanning it.