E-Mail Scanning

I'm thinking of trying Avira Premium A/V. My ISP requires a secure SSL connection so Avira will not scan my e-mail. There are other A/V's that will scan this type of connection, however I would like to give Avira a try. How important is it that the e-mail get scanned? Will the Guard pick it up? I have never used an A/V that did not scan my e-mail & I have stopped e-mail viruses before.

 

Well if you download an infected attachment Avira will delete (or disinfect it), (either by manual scanning or by it's Guard).

 

e-mail scanning will detect threats in advance, no more no less. The Guard will catch them anyway before they do any harm.

 

The only scenario where having email not scanned can be a problem is where the email contains code that exploits your email client to directly execute the program. There is not a high risk of this occuring.

Also does your ISP scan and filter your email for you? If so, then pop3 scanning adds a diminished value.

Cheers
Jeremy

 

As far as I know they do. It would be nice if they had an Outlook plug-in like some do.

 

Email scanners are a bit of a marketing gimmick, and can damage Outlook Express. Your resident AV guard uses the same detection files as the email scanner, and will detect any infection when you open your email. If it doesn't, the email scanner won't either.

I have always disabled email scanning in the various AVs I have used, and have yet to regret it.

References:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx#EOAAC
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutorials/email-scanning/index.htm

 

i read those links about email scanners causing corroption with outlook express but i have used email scanners with outlook express for years and never had an issue.
i mean come on no other email program has corroption issues because of email scanners. there is enough email scanners for other operating systems and other email programs.

 

I would be VERY interested in a list of anti virus programs which CAN scan SSL mail.
I have only come across one -KAV.

Of course you can use Stunnel, but it's hellishly difficult to set up, in my experience and not worth the trouble.

 

KAV/KIS do...I'm not sure of others.

To be honest, it depends on how you use your mail. I can live without a mail scanner because I have all of my mail delivered in plain text and I reject any from senders I do not recognise. You may want a mail scanner to give you that extra piece of mind...they can pick up any exploits/phishing etc that you may be getting and remove them before you have the chance to expose yourself. But then again, if your AV has on access scanning enabled it should be caught when you open it anyway

 

@Iodore:

Even leaving aside the question of "corroption"(sic), the OP's question was "How important is it that the e-mail get scanned?"

The answer is that any reputable resident AV will detect infection when the email is opened. Email scanners offer no additional protection.

http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?p=188050#p188050

 

If you use a mail client like Thunderbird, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to use a dedicated mail scanner.

Most of the additional scanner modules you find in some AVs are completely useless and only included for marketing reasons. I mean, come on, look at Avast that includes a p2p-scanner. The extra protection you get from this in addition to a regular realtime scanner (file monitor) is?

 

hello ola nordmann,
the only addtional protection that is really needed is http scanning since the standard realtime protection wont be able to block webexploits. this has been explained by av experts in the forum before.
i have already setup outlook express on my parents computer downstairs to display emails in plain text as an extra security layer. so basically conponants like email scanner,instant messsenger scanner are just uneeded.
for an instant messager file send to work you would have to excute it yourself. by that point it would of been scanned by the realtime file monitor.
i have just uninstalle the email and instant messenger scann componant of my av because i know with http scanning and file monitor im protected.

this begs the question since microsoft reccomends you dont use an email scanner for outlook and outlook express why do most av vendors create email scanners for it?

i reemmeber when i was trying practically all the av's one of the email scanners stopped outlook express from opening properly,it worked when i disabled the componant.

 

I would first check and see if your ISP is scanning, many do nowadays, mine does. If so, then you shouldn't need it. If not, then I still think that the Avira resident guard will catch anything on a file write anyway.