How Do I Deal with Email Warnings

[helen108]

I have a Vista operating system and Avast Home Edition 4.8.  Over the past two days, every time I open my email I'm receiving a "Suspicious Message" warning while receiving mail.  There are at least 15 of them every time I open my mail.  When the message comes up, I only have two options.  I can delete it or continue.  The option to "Block It" is grayed out.  I hit delete and get a list of all the warnings in my email.  Why can't i block this mail? 

[Black3agl3]

What are u using to read ur e-mails? Thunderbird? Browser?

[DavidR]

What is it that is found suspicious (this is reported in the alert) ?

[helen108]

I am using Microsoft Live Mail as my email client.

[DavidR]

The answer to this helps us to help you.

What is it that is found suspicious (this is reported in the alert) ?

[helen108]

This is the message I receive:

[avast! heuristic - WARNING!]

Multiple Content-Type header - HIGH DANGER!


Sender:  Contact Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your ATM SWIFT CARD: <mbanki71@yahoo.com>
Recipient:  <XXX>
Subject:  Dating 101: Reviving Your Relationship

I x'ed out my email address.  It comes to ALL of my email accounts.  All of it is coming from Nigeria.  Why can't I block this mail???  The option to block it is grayed out on the warning.

[DavidR]

It certainly looks like it is a valid warning:
1. given the sender and reference to ATM Swift Card; this could be a hook to get you interested especially if you happened to have such a card.
2. the subject looks like the usual spam, but for some it is also likely promote interest to get you to at least open it.
3. whilst you don't actually indicate the content, it is highly likely it has links pointing at suspect sites.

So for all of the above, the detection/alert looks good and the action you should choose is delete. Continue allows it through and I don't know why the Block option is given as I can't recall it ever having been enabled (not greyed out) in any testing I have done to produce images of alerts (see example image).

But Blocking as my guess if available is pretty worthless as block what, most from email addresses are forged so there would be little point in blocking the sender as you would be unlikely to be getting more from that forged address, blocking a whole domain, yahoo.com would seriously impact your email as many legitimately use yahoo.

So deletion in this case and for most suspect emails (if the reason seems to match the content) would be the best option.

[CharleyO]

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Helen -

You might try some of the links included at the link below. Scroll down to the section titled "Spam Help."

http://max.shplink.com/tools.html


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