Author Topic: Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?  (Read 11871 times)

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Offline Amgeek

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Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?
« on: August 22, 2008, 04:56:18 PM »
I had a problem with a Windows Vista machine, running Windows Mail, mainly I was unable to delete certain e-mails. Upon researching the problem I came across a suggestion that the problem may be caused by the e-mail scanning function of my anti-virus (avast) and that I should disable its (avast) e-mail scanner for both incoming and outgoing email.

Should I?

Here is a link and a quote

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/62560-windows-mail-problems.html


According to the forum

"Make sure your antivirus or any other security programs have all of their email scanning options turned off. The emailscaning option is a redundant feature.
NOTE: These scanning options can corrupt Windows Mail entire message folder, or the entire message store, when it attempts to remove a message it thinks contains a potential virus. You will still be protected against infection with the antivirus program's system protection. These email scans can also cause problems with opening attachments in Windows Mail to."

Is that right? Should we be turning off the e-mail scanner?




wyrmrider

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Re: Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2008, 06:29:23 PM »
best to do it till sorted out
They certainly covered their asses did they not
typical Microstof
always someone else's fault

Online DavidR

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Re: Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2008, 06:34:45 PM »
Short answer No leave the email scanning options enabled.

Slightly longer answer, avast works well with the various incarnation of MS email clients, OE, Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail, etc. Not to mention the avast email scanner works differently to many scanners as it scans incoming email in a localhost proxy (before it even gets to your inbox) so it isn't working in your mail boxes so can't corrupt files that it isn't working with.

I would dispute the "The email scanning option is a redundant feature" comment, email is still a major route of entry for malware.

So leave it enabled and I would go a step further and increase the Internet Mail provider's sensitivity to High. On High it can detect multiple identical emails in a period of time, this could be an early indication that there is a hidden or undetected trojan spambot on your system.

I hate people that make these kine of blanket statements for 'all' AVs as they aren't all the same.

The most dangerous type of scan isn't the inbound or outbound scan but an on-demand scan of your HDD when your email folders (database files) are scanned. If an infected email is found inside one of these some AVs could corrupt the database file when trying to extract an infected email from within it or worse still delete the file as it would treat the infection as one file.

So care has to be exercised in the on-demand scans if a detection is pointing to your email files and seek advice. avast hasn't had any problems extracting infected emails from within the OE .dbx files in the past and I don't know if this is the file format retained by Windows Mail.

This statement is cr*p too:
Quote
These email scans can also cause problems with opening attachments in Windows Mail to."

You should 'never' open an attachment directly from an email (and that is the message they should be promoting), but save it to your HDD, where you can svan it in safety before opening it.

God I'm mad at these blanket statements.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security

wyrmrider

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Re: Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2008, 07:02:04 PM »
DavidR
Thanks for sorting it out

now back to AMgeeks first post
I had a problem with a Windows Vista machine, running Windows Mail, mainly I was unable to delete certain e-mails.

Online DavidR

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Re: Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2008, 08:15:04 PM »
There is no information to actually suggest anything, e.g. what certain types of email, what type of scan, why there was a need to delete, avast detection etc. etc. we thrive on information. Without it we are totally in the dark.

However I don't use Windows Mail or Vista, so I can't really offer any practical (but generic) suggestions.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Windows Mail corrupted by e-mail virus scan?
« Reply #5 on: August 23, 2008, 01:17:32 AM »
I had a problem with a Windows Vista machine, running Windows Mail, mainly I was unable to delete certain e-mails. Upon researching the problem I came across a suggestion that the problem may be caused by the e-mail scanning function of my anti-virus (avast) and that I should disable its (avast) e-mail scanner for both incoming and outgoing email.

Should I?
No. avast does not block deletion of any email inside of Windows Mail.
Is it an infected mail? I mean, is avast detecting it as being infected?

The emailscaning option is a redundant feature.
Only if you use Standard Shield at High level. Which is not the best balance between performance and protection.
The best things in life are free.