Scanning e-mails

[andy62]

Can anyone run me through the method of scanning e-mail attachments for viruses please?

[DavidR]

What is your OS?
What is your email program?
What is it exactly you are trying to do?

You don't have to, once set-up the avast Internet Mail or Outlook/Exchange provider/plug-in (depending on your email program) will scan inbound email including the attachments if they have any automatically.

If you are talking about scanning existing emails that might have infected attachments then a standard scan of the folder where your email client stores its files. This can be a problem depending on your email program.

[andy62]

Greetings David, it's XP and I'm on Outlook Express. I seem to recall a way to manually scan attachments before you open them. Is this possible?

[Lisandro]

Greetings David, it's XP and I'm on Outlook Express. I seem to recall a way to manually scan attachments before you open them. Is this possible?

You can save the file to disk, right click it and scan with the Explorer Extension (ashQuick.exe).
But, of course, we must try to find a way to correct the email scanning as avast can scan emails for sure...
Don't you have Internet Mail provider scanning your emails?

[DavidR]

The act of saving the attachment to a folder on the HDD (I suggest one called attachments, so you know where they are) should have them scanned by standard shield anyway. However, ashQuick.exe may scan to a different specification.

[alanrf]

Andy62,

I wonder why you would be going to this trouble when, if the avast Internet Mail scanner is active on your system your regular POP3 email accounts will have already been automatically scanned by avast before they reach your OE Inbox. 

Do you have accounts that cannot be scanned by the Internet Mail scanner?

If you are planning to do manual scans then, as mentioned by DavidR, ashquick.exe will provide a more thorough scan of your email attachments including the contents of archive type files (like .zip).