When i click on Avast! I geta screen titled Standard Shield that says that the “InstalledProviders cover Instant messaging, Internet Mail, Outlook Exchange, Standard Shield, and P2P shield.”
What does each of these categories mean?
And can I assume that each of them is active, or do I need to do more to activate them?
This is not totally accurate, Internet Mail protests pop3 mail that is downloaded from your isp’s mail.server. It doesn’t protect downloads of Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. (webmail or http mail) as this doesn’t use the pop3 mail protocol. Standard Shield however, does give some protection (your webmail provider may also virus scan mail on their server), depending on your settings.
Your best course of action is to browse the afast help file in the program (start> All Programs > Avast > help), then look at the Users-FAQ thread on the Off Topic forum.