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Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: nightshade on November 26, 2008, 12:15:44 AM
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In the resident task settings for MS - Outlook for inbound mail there is an option for if Avast finds an infected inbound message to discard it unconditionally, can I ask what this means? and what is the best option out of the 3 to choose from?
1. Let it be delivered to your inbox
2. Discard it unconditionally
3. Move it to a folder.
I have just created a folder within the MS-Outlook inbox, and I called it Infected Messages, and I thought I could point them to that box, but I am not sure what the safer practice would be.
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I would say it means delete, but since it isn't in your inbox it isn't actually deleting it, just not allowing it into your mail boxes, e.g. discarding it, throwing it away, history, gone, deceased, gone to the digital bit bucket, it is no more.
Apart from the fact I don't use MS Outlook, I would plum for discard, I personally don't care about the occasional loss of an email that might be considered infected.
I certainly wouldn't allow it into the inbox, I wouldn't want the possibility if at some point corrupting the inbox.
You could create a 'suspect' email folder and elect to send it there and personally I can see no reason to keep infected emails, I mean what are you going to do with them ?
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You could create a 'suspect' email folder and elect to send it there and personally I can see no reason to keep infected emails, I mean what are you going to do with them ?
Thanks for your reply, as I said in my post and like you have also said here, I had created a box for infected mail as it may be required to send for analysis, which brings us back to my other post I made tonight.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=40421.0
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Why would you want to send an email for analysis if it is flagged as infected unless you suspect it is an FP and you can't do that without checking it out. So it is a wasted effort to submit it, and it can't really be submitted from an email folder, it has to be from detection or the chest, you would have had to save the attachment to your HDD which is likely to trigger another alert and then you could send it to the chest. But as I said really is a waste of time, not just on your part by Alwil have to analyse it...
I use an anti-spam program, MailWasher Pro and apart from detecting spam I also see a small part of my emails (103 lines) in text mode no attachments. From that it will flag what it considers spam and anything that it thinks a virus (not very intuitive mainly looking at what might be attached to the email on the server, like an .exe file).
I am able to screen any other email not caught and flag for deletion if I think they are suspect (phishing). That gets rid of everything other than legit email.
I then click Process Mail and it deletes all the email that has bee flagged for deletion from my email server, it then calls my email program and I then download only those good emails. That sames me having to download dross to scan with an anti-spam and then avast or vice versa, saves me a lot of time on dial-up...
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The reason I talked about send files for analysis was because it mentioned this in the help files that's all.
This looks interesting from the help file...
If avast! finds an infected inbound message
let it be delivered to your Inbox. Infected virus messages will be left intact and delivered to your Inbox as usual, possibly including the virus attachment.
discard it unconditionally. The virus attachment will be discarded. If the virus resides in the message body directly, the whole message will be deleted.
move it to the following Outlook folder. Infected messages will be moved to the Outlook folder selected below.
Thanks again DavidR.
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You're welcome.
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I have taken your advice and ticked the box to discard any infected mail unconditionally, which seems a safer option.
Night........
:)