I’m having problems using the email scanner with Thunderbird 2.x.
I’ve configured the scanner options under the Redirect tab with the correct IMAP port for Gmail (993), but when I attempt to download mail into one of the folders the process seems to hang indefinitely (although the email scanner icon appears in the tray), and Thunderbird is prevented from downloading the mail.
Does anyone know if this relates to Gmail’s unique folder/label mapping function?
No antivirus product can scan any secure email connection (whether secure POP, secure SMTP or secure IMAP).
That is how it is supposed to be and the whole point of it being secure … secure connections cannot be reviewed by anyone or any software.
So any effort to make avast scan the secure connection is (sorry to say) an exercise in futility and doomed to prevent the connection working.
At present if you want to have secure email connections scanned by avast then you need to use a third party program (STunnel) to manage the secure email connections to the server and then pass the email to your mail client (in this case Thunderbird) totally inside your system in a way that can be scanned by avast.
GMail claims that all email attachments have already been virus scanned but I do not believe they have yet made the same claim for the html content of the body of emails.
If you can be patient then the avast team have advised that avast itself will provide the support for secure email connections (ie that which currently needs STunnel) in the avast 5 release expected before the end of this year.
There are threads in this forum that do can assist with the use of STunnel for GMail POP but I cannot recall one for GMail IMAP (though I will be happy to be wrong). For now if you want to try to set up STunnel for GMail IMAP with avast and encounter any difficulty please advise and I will do my best to assist.
I’m most grateful for your help.
I’ll look forward to Avast! v.5, although I’m concerned to hear that the GUI will no longer be skinnable!
I am sure that avast 5 will have a more aesthetically pleasing user interface (since the skin support software is no longer available to them).
However, if avast 5 is still free and avast 5 is still a great antivirus product I will probably still recommend it to the folks I support “warts and all”.
Please let me know if you want to try avast, STunnel and GMail IMAP. I might even do it anyway (just because I have only done the avast, STunnel and GMail POP already). But if I recall from Brian’s posts in the Thunderbird forum last year - when GMail IMAP became available - there are quite a few Thunderbird config tweaks needed to get GMail IMAP to play nicely with Thunderbird.
I’ve been using Thunderbird with Gmail IMAP for a few months now. No problems, no tweaking required!
The only thing that may require some patience is learning the interaction between Thunderbird folders and Gmail’s ‘label’ system. The Gmail help pages include a table which maps actions in TB to its effect on the webmail account.
TB also creates an ‘IMAP/trash’ folder (which can’t be removed, although other default folders can be), which accordingly appears in the webmail interface as a new label.
Getting back to Avast!, I may have a go with STunnel a little later, although as you mention Gmail claims to scan all attachments ‘upstream’ of a local IMAP download which reduces the need for a resident email scan. Malware in the HTML body obviously remains a risk though.
Any info on the Avast! - Stunnel - TB/Gmail/IMAP setup would be greatly appreciated.