Occasionally I’ll copy something from a website and paste it in an outgoing message in Thunderbird - my email client. Sometimes the mail server will reject the message saying there’s a virus in it. I use Avast antivirus and would like to be able to right-click the message and have it scanned by Avast. I’ve already got Avast set up to scan incoming and outgoing messages for viruses, so I don’t think there’s actually a virus in the message - just something the mail server ‘sees’ and doesn’t like. If I right-click a file or folder in my computer, an Avast scan function is displayed. But this option doesn’t appear if I right-click the outgoing message in Thunderbird. Anyone got an idea? Thanks for any help…SlimJim
I saw this also in the Thunderbird forum - the standard advice there is to not scan outbound messages.
Back to avast.
There is no way you can scan the message as it is being composed in Thunderbird or any other mail client, because it is just being built as you go in memory. Once you click the send button and the message is being sent to the SMTP server then and only then can an antivirus program get a look at the message and its attachments as the mail client transmits it. The mail message (in almost every client) is not written to the “Sent” folder until the SMTP server has given a final confirmation that the message has been received.
It seems you are saying that your email service is scanning the mail and giving you an error message.
I hope you won’t mind some questions.
Can you tell us exactly what the message is?
Which operating system are you using?
Have you confirmed that you do have outbound scanned selected in the Internet Mail scanner of avast (in the SMTP tab)?
Is the SMTP connection you are using in Thunderbird set to use a secure transmission?
Are you sending the email to a Webmail service using a “helper program” (Thunderbird forumspeak)?
Thanks, Alan, for your response. I received a Powerpoint attachment, from a friend, on viewing pictures of earth. So you could take a look at it too, if you wanted to, I Googled it and found this link to download and view it: http://lifeseeds.typepad.com/lifeseeds/2007/01/wow_our_planet_.html When I went to send it to a friend a message appeared saying there was a virus present. I just tried sending it again and it went through. I thought it would be rejected again so I could get the exact message… I use Win XP Home, SP2…I looked in Avast on your SMTP tab and couldn’t find anything to check. Could you elaborate further on this? Thanks… Last, I don’t use a webmail service service as a ‘helper’; but I do use Gmail as my main email client to receive messages. But the message I sent that originally got rejected was sent through my ISP, which is Cableone. As a side note, I did a scan of my hard drive after receiving the virus alert, but didn’t come up with any viruses, but did get a list of probably a couple of dozen files Avast couldn’t scan. Most of them seemed to be in Application Data files. Any idea why Avast couldn’t scan these files? Thanks, again for your help. I may have overloaded you with questions… :)…SlimJim