In the event of a virus in one email, will all my inbox be sent in quarantine with the new AVAST HOME or just the email. That’s a quote from 3 years ago:
E-mail Clients that Store Messages in a Single File
Some e-mail clients (e.g. The Bat!) store all messages in a single file. Others store each e-mail as a separate file. If avast finds a virus attached to an e-mail, it will consider the entire file (i.e. all the e-mails in that file) to be infected. Therefore, the entire file will be removed or moved to Chest.
Inbound email should be intercepted before it arrives in your inpox, that is why avast intercepts the email so an individual infected email could be deleted before it arrives in the inbox, depending on your decision on interception.
You shouldn’t use the inbox for general storage more of a pending tray once you read and action an email move it to a more appropriate folder. The inbox is the most susceptible to corruption for many reasons not just AV.
The bat is a poor example as it has its own plug-in for avast, but there are many that store email folders as a single file, like OE whch stores them in .dbx files. avast can extract an infected email from an OE .dbx file unfortunately that isn’t the case for many email clients, thunderbird being one, This is why there is a warning about this in the thunderbird FAQs.
The main problem is on-demand scans (rather than on-access) as the infected file is inside the database file so you neeed to record details of the infection, what mailbox/folder, the email subject and any attachment name, etc. Using this you can manually find an infected email and delete it manually and then empty the deleted emails folder.
I’m nervous about that. So, in a sense, it’s better to use OE than Outlook or Thunderbird. Let’s have the scenario a virus signature enters the AVAST definition data base only hours after you received an email infected with it, it would be possible to manually delete that email in OE but not Outlook. Never happened, anyway I sure like the added protection that scanning emails before they actually reach your email client is currently always available and working for Avast Home Edition. ;D
The key is if an on-demand scan flags an infection in the inbox, etc. it has a very long path, which includes the folder, email subject and attachment, etc. With that information you should be able to find that infected email and delete it in the folder manually (avast wouldn’t be involved), not just in one email client but any email client then manually empty the deleted emails folder.
With OE you can allow avast to delete the email on detection as it can extract the infected email from the database file without corrupting it or deleting the whole database file. So I think you misunderstood what I meant by manual deletion, you find it in your infected email, you delete it, you empty the deleted emails folder not avast.
Disable the avast plugin.
Open MS Outlook go to email but does not open it or open any attached file.
Delete the email.
Close MS Outlook.
Start avast plugin for Outlook again.
The real world fact is that you are worrying about nothing.
avast could just about not detect a virus in a Thunderbird mail folder if the whole future of Alwil depended on it. I say just about because there is one caveat. If the virus is in the very first (the oldest) email in an avast folder then avast can detect it - otherwise it cannot see them at all.
So, you are actually much much safer with avast since it will almost never … ever … detect a virus in your Thunderbird mail folders and bother you at all.
All the smarts are in the Internet Mail scanner and that will do a superb job of stopping the nasties getting into your email database. If they do (in the scenario that you are worrying about) when you access that email the Standard Shield will catch it.
Any more gotchas you are worrying about and want to throw our way?