There are always going to be these phishing style attacks and for the most part common sense plays a major part. Don't click links or open attachments in unsolicited emails, don't open attachments from within emails, always save it to a temporary location and scan it (that should effectively be done on saving the file). You could also use one of the milti-engine scanners to check it like virustotal, jotti, etc.
Don't run any .exe or multiple file type (.txt.exe, etc.) attachments.
Checking avasts VPS history or virus database might not reveal anything, that is not to say it wouldn't protect you as avast may call it something different, there is o standard naming convention for malware names, so it may have many aliases.
