I have a sbcglobal.net email and just received a email to change the servers and the POP & SMTP ports for Email security enhancements.
Here are the details.
Alternatively, you may take the following steps to change the settings on your desktop or mobile email client program:
Open your email client program.
Locate the email account settings for your particular client.
Change the POP server to pop.att.yahoo.com.
Change the SMTP server to smtp.att.yahoo.com.
Check the option labeled Use an encrypted connection (SSL) and change the SMTP port to 465.
Check the option labeled Use an encrypted connection (SSL) and change the POP3 port to 995.
Confirm the above settings then click OK.
Will this have any affect on the avast mail scanner? Thanks for any input!!
Yes, avast can’t scan your SSL/TLS secure encrypted email, that is the whole purpose of secure email to keep out snoopers including AVs out, avast can only do that with a third party application STunnel.
avast monitors the POP3 port 110 and SMTP port 25, other ports can be added to the monitoring provided they conform to the standard POP protocol and the SSL/TLS doesn’t so adding these ports would cause an error message from your email program.
Stunnel now comes as an installer which installs Open SSL and Stunnel so now you just have to download the installer version from here http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html
Thanks David R, I was afraid of that. Sounds like hassle to go through but I’m not sure I want to risk not having mail scanned for viruses. If I remember right I have gotten email before that says it was cleaned by the AT&T/SBC Scanner so it might be OK to let it go. Is Stunnel fairly easy to configure? Thanks!!
I honestly couldn’t say, I have never used it my email is bog standard POP3 protocol.
By all accounts it isn’t too much of a problem, taking things step by step and printing off those topics might help, I believe there are also some more topics re setting up Stunnel.
Thanks, I guess I’ll tinker with it, just one more thing to add to my list. It’s a shame that one security enhancment opens up another security hole. Thanks again!!
They have simply outsourced to yahoo and yahoo does perform mail scans already, so it is not that big a security hole. Just try sending an eicar test virus to yourself.
The avast team could do us all a big favor by providing secure connection management within the Internet Mail provider instead of making everyone work out how to use STunnel. It is very clear that more and more ISPs are nudging their users down the same road as yours.
Thanks DavidR, Tech and alanrf for the great suggestions and help. That’s what is so great about using avast. Everyone is so willing to help. I greatly appreciate it!! ;D
Just sent a eicar test to myself and it got through the yahoo severs. I will have to change my ports and servers soon because I just received another email from ATT that once they implement the changes I won’t be able to access my mail. I am going to attempt the Stunnel setup, so wish me luck!!
Read over those Links I gave (or print for off-line reference), the first one is probably nearer to your requirement.
This post by Alan gives a graphic view of how STunnel fit in with avast to be able to scan secure email, whilst it refers to Gmail ports, I believe you should be able to substitute your email ports required by Yahoo, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23814.msg201231#msg201231.
Got it working. Here is the stunnel.conf file and the Outlook Express settings for anyone that needs to get setup for avast to scan ATT Yahoo SSL mail.
Once I really thought it through it made sense. It wasn’t while I was trying configure it, the thought of how it needed to be was when I was thinking about it when I was away from the computer. Sometimes that’s what it takes. Oh, and the tip from sded about commenting out the smtp protocol line with ; made sending possible, I’m glad I saw that one!!
Now I need to get another email checker called eprompter configured. Here is the link to a post on that forum.
:PNow I have another dilema. I tried to setup my wife’s system with the same configuration as she too has Att Yahoo mail. She uses Incredimail however. Everything works as far as sending and receiving but avast is not scanning the outgoing mail. The blue avast ball spins but the mail scanning tray icon does not appear. avast is set to insert a clean note and you guessed it it does not appear in the sent email. The mail scanning tray icon appears for incoming mail and the note appears on those incoming emails. Do you think this is an avast quirk or do i possibly have to alter the stunnel config file somehow? Thanks in advance!!
You’re right Tech, that was kind of dumb, sorry I was thinking 2 seperate posts would double my chances for replies but it does double the work and helping. I’m sorry, here is the link to the other post, everyone can just ignore my previous post and reply to the other one. Here it is