Mail scanning on non-standard POP3 port?

[beerslayer]

Hi,

I just now discovered a situation where I'm having trouble figuring out how to make avast do what I want it to do...

Most of my mail accounts are being scanned through avast just fine, without any problems, on the standard POP3 and SMTP ports (110 and 25, respectively).  However, I recently installed a program called YahooPOPs, which allows me to download mail from a Yahoo mail account using a standard POP3 client.

The problem is that YahooPOPs needs to set itself up locally as a mail server, so that the mail client can ask it to retrieve Yahoo mail.  Since avast already has port 110 tied up for much the same purpose, I had to force YahooPOPs to use a different port (I chose 8110).  Now, my mail client can pull down my Yahoo mail at 127.0.0.1:8110 without any difficulty, but it's not scanned of course, since avast has no idea there's a mail server on port 8110.

What I want is NOT to disturb the existing avast mail setup, which is working great.  Rather, I'd like to tell avast to check YahooPOPs for mail also.  If avast could be instructed to check 127.0.0.1:8110 as well as whatever other mail server is in use, that would solve the problem.

Is there a way to do this already in avast?  If not, any other creative solutions to this problem?  I really do want to scan my Yahoo mail, since this account is filled with spam and some of it is malicious.

Thanks in advance,

-- Jeff
-- aka The Beerslayer

[neal62]

Hello beerslayer.

I also use YahooPops with my particular hard drive based e-mail program. In this case I use "Thunderbird". Now, I have my YahooPops configuration set up as such. In YahoPops under the Network settings I have "Bind on I.P. Address 127.0.0.1.
The Pop3 Port is designated as 111.
For the YahoPops SMTP settings: I have that checked as enabled. "Enable SMTP" SMTP Port 26.

Now this is what I have set up on my Thunderbird e-mail settings:
Acct name....etc
Your name....etc
E-mail address.....etc
Server type is "Pop Mail Server"
Server name, incoming is "local host" w/o the quote marks, Port 110
User name......etc.
Outgoing Server (SMTP)
Server name 127.0.0.1
Port 25.
These settings within the YahooPops program and also my e-mail program work just fine. I download mail from Yahoo all the time into my hard drive based program, "Thunderbird" and allow Avast to scan this mail. Hope these settings and this information help you somewhat.  Have a nice day.

[beerslayer]

Thanks for the reply, Neal.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the setup you describe would work in my situation.  If I haven't completely misunderstood your post, you are doing one of two things:

1) downloading your Yahoo mail without scanning, and scanning it manually only after it's already been fully downloaded;

2) your Yahoo account is the only one you are interested in checking in your mail client, and therefore you can dedicate avast to checking only port 111 for incoming e-mail (I assume you have instructed avast to connect via port 111 within avast4.ini).

#1 is simply an inelegant solution that I refuse to consider!  

As for #2, that setup won't work for me, since I have several different email accounts I want to scan, only one of which requires YahooPOPs to access, with all the rest being standard accounts on standard mail servers.  If necessary, I will forego scanning my Yahoo mail to keep the rest of the servers set up as they are (I've lived without scanning it this long...).

In reading through the post about avast4.ini, I noticed a parameter entitled "DefaultPOPServer", which looks like it can be set to check a specific server or port instead of the standard POP3 port.  However, the word "Default" implies that this setting can only be used once.  If I could use this to specify two "default" servers/ports, that might solve my problem as well.

-- Jeff
-- aka The Beerslayer

[Lisandro]

Since I have several different email accounts I want to scan, only one of which requires YahooPOPs to access, with all the rest being standard accounts on standard mail servers.  If necessary, I will forego scanning my Yahoo mail to keep the rest of the servers set up as they are (I've lived without scanning it this long...).

I'm not sure but I think you will receive your messages into your email program 'after' they were downloaded by YahooPops (if this program works like a plugin of your email client). If not, if it really download and store the messages - i.e. it's a standalone application - you could configure the email account settings to a specific port:

account_settings:port_number

In reading through the post about avast4.ini, I noticed a parameter entitled "DefaultPOPServer", which looks like it can be set to check a specific server or port instead of the standard POP3 port.  However, the word "Default" implies that this setting can only be used once.  If I could use this to specify two "default" servers/ports, that might solve my problem as well.

Don't worry about the default. It's used for another purpose.
You can set avast to work with any email accounts as you wish or, at least, let the default be the yahoo one and the others will work perfectly.

[beerslayer]

I'm not sure but I think you will receive your messages into your email program 'after' they were downloaded by YahooPops (if this program works like a plugin of your email client). If not, if it really download and store the messages - i.e. it's a standalone application - you could configure the email account settings to a specific port:

account_settings:port_number

This isn't quite how it works.

Yahoo mail does not use standard POP3/SMTP for receiving or sending mail, and therefore a standard POP3 mail client CANNOT check Yahoo mail directly.  Users are limited to using Yahoo mail via Yahoo's website, unless they pay extra for a POP3 gateway that Yahoo has set up.

I don't have extra to pay for it with, even were I willing to do so.

What YahooPOPs (http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net) is, in essence, is a POP3 gateway that runs on one's local machine.  From what I can glean from their documentation, it pretends to be a web browser for the purpose of communicating with Yahoo's website and retrieving mail, at which point its built-in POP3 server (running on the local machine) makes the contents available to a mail client.

Thus the chain of action (without avast), and what I already have set up and working, is:

1) Mail sits on Yahoo's non-POP3 server.
2) YahooPOPs pretends to be web browser and retrieves mail from Yahoo's non-POP3 server (presumably via HTTP).
3) YahooPOPs acts as POP3 server and makes mail available at 127.0.0.1:<some nonstandard port#>.
4) Mail client is set to check mail at 127.0.0.1:<port#>.

For avast to function in this scenario, it *MUST* sit between YahooPOPs and my POP3 mail client (i.e. step "3.5"), since avast has no way of communicating directly with Yahoo's mail server except through YahooPOPs.

But I can find no way to tell avast to check for mail at 127.0.0.1:8110 that won't presumably disturb its checking at pop3.myhost.com:110 for my other accounts.

Does that make the problem clearer?

-- Jeff
-- aka The Beerslayer

[beerslayer]

OK, never mind - I found a trick to make it work.

For anyone else trying to set this up, here's what I did:

1) YahooPOPs is set up for POP3/SMTP at ports 8110/8025 respectively (any two nonstandard unused ports should work).
2) Mail client is set up with the following:
Account: myyahooid#127.0.0.1:8110
POP3 server: 127.0.0.1

I didn't think including the port number as part of the account name was going to work, but it does seem to work OK.  If this is what you were trying to advise me to do, sorry about the misunderstanding.

Thanks to all,

-- Jeff
-- aka The Beerslayer

[Joker007]

Working solution:

OE setup:
POP3:127.0.0.1
SMTP:127.0.0.1
Account:your yahoo ID
Passw: your passw

Server port numbers:
POP3:112
SMTP:26

YAHOOPOPs Setup:
POP3:110
SMTP:26

AVAST.INI Setup:
Add lines:

SmtpListen=127.0.0.1:26
PopListen=127.0.0.1:112
ImapListen=127.0.0.1:143


Working great for me using YahooPOPs!!

Thanks!!