Avast! 5, Mail Shield useless, not doing its job properly

[bong2x]

  Logos we are all in school called life 
Life is a continuous process of learning, everyday you learned to someone you encountered and talk with   

[wantstocry]

OK, I was really happy to find that Thunderbird worked with MSN and it made sending emails convenient and everything but Avast keeps sending me this error message about "ssl/tls". I don't even know what the hell that means. Are you eggheads purposely trying to make the internet so complicated that we ignorant laymen just leave in disgust? WTF?

So here's what happened...I sent an email. Everything's working fine up until this point. Then I see the error message from Avast that was posted in the beginning of this thread. So I look in my account settings (in Thunderbird), and my live.com email doesn't even fricken' have ssl/tls enabled. It's something like "startttls" or whatever the bloody hell...so what now?

So I'm googling this error message and it appears that only me and the thread starter are the ONLY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD having problems with it. So I'm like %&*@!!!?! and now I have a strong desire to murder the innocent.

Takes deep breath...sighs...

Okay. I'm not even going to try and decipher eggbonics. Can you at least tell me this...will reinstalling Thunderbird fix it?

[DavidR]

First we haven't got a clue what version of avast you are using, you haven't said ?
avast 4.8 can't handle secure encrypted email (SSL/TLS).
avast 5.0 can work with this but you have to make some manual changes in the thunderbird email account settings.

Given the error you are talking about "It's something like "startttls" or whatever" perhaps you are using avast 4.8, so before we can possibly attempt to help we need to know what version of avast your are using.

[jokre]

I must add to the comments on Avast 5 (Free) behaviour regarding email handling. I use Pop Peeper to check several of my POP accounts and it has always worked very well with Avast 4.x and I have been really satisfied with the way Avast integrate with that product. Then I installed Avast 5 when it was released officially and then one of the POP accounts I checked in Pop Peeper stopped to work/receive POP notifications on that particular computer. The other POP accounts still worked perfectly well though. Checking the "faulty" account from other computers worked all fine using Pop Peeper or other email applications. If I stopped the Mail Shield in Avast 5 it worked perfectly OK again to receive emails, then as I started the Mail shield again just that specific POP account failed again with error: "Login Error (Authentication failed.)"

So... all this has worked without any problems what so ever with Avast 4.x but as soon as I installed Avast 5 the problems started to appear. It's not only this issue that Avast 5 has introduced, I even had to deinstall Avast 5 on one of the other computers at home because it froze all the time, now with Avast 5 deinstalled the computer works perfectly well again (with another malware protection installed of course). This is extremely sad since I was very satisfied with what Avast 4.x offered in terms of protection and stability and I've always recommended Avast but I can't do that anymore without having doubts. One thing is good with Avast 5 though compared to Avast 4.x and that's the user interface. I really hope these issues are solved fast so that I can go back to use Avast 5 Free again on my home computers.

Using:
Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0.462
Vista with latest SP and all updates installed

[Hermite15]

concerning the mail scanner, there's nothing to solve on Avast side. I've been using it for a while now on Thunderbird + Gmail/IMAP and it worked/works; I wanted to try POPpeeper and it worked too.
 The issue in this thread as usual is people complaining about the behavior of a mail proxy without understanding what it is about.
 You're saying it worked with Avast 4.8: what worked? you thought it worked because Avast 4.8 didn't have any ssl proxy and your mails were not scanned at all ... but hey, you got your mails then, so Avast 4.8 worked

[miscreant]

Logos is correct in his last post.I suspect the problem is because you also use poppeeper with your mail client,that it requires altered settings in there too.I use spamihilator,with my mail client ,and i had to alter settings in there as well as my mail client so that avast would scan.Avast does scan gmail.It scans my gmail(sky mail) and certifies it ,and works with my mail client and spamihilator as long as the settings are correct.Please post screenshots of your mail client settings,your pop peeper settings ,and your avast settings.I know getting av mail scanners to work can be frustrating,but assuming that there are options in pop peeper ,and your mail client to alter settings then im sure the problem can be resolved.Ive just looked at poppeeper and theres ssl plugin.If poppeeper is handling ssl then ,avast wont be able to.You need to disable ssl in poppeeper and allow avast to handle that
http://www.poppeeper.com/Plugins/ssl.php
Spamihilator has an option to disable ssl in its setting gui.If poppeeper has this ,then disable it too.If not then maybe try removing the ssl plugin.
m

[jokre]

OK, since the statement is that nothing is going to be solved within Avast, then nothing to do, so I'm not going to use it anymore. My problem solved.

[doktornotor]

OK, since the statement is that nothing is going to be solved within Avast, then nothing to do, so I'm not going to use it anymore. My problem solved.

Well, indeed. Avast cannot solve email client misconfiguration on your part. So, if you are unwilling to read the provided help/docs on this and configure the stuff as required, then you'll have to either disable the mail shield or use another product. However note that you'll have exact same "bug" with any AV that provides SSL-checking functionality (such as NOD32). Simply because it requires client reconfiguration.

[bege]

God, is this a funny thread - at least if one is not involved in the bad words!

Well, with an angry mind it's difficult to change ones thinking - "I am right, you are wrong."

I had to learn that the mail shield of Avast 5 works different from that of Avast 4.8 and therefore needs different settings. The help file gives some answers and the missing ones I got from forum members.
Meanwhile my mail shield works fine - pop3 and smtp encrypted, what Avast 4.8 could not do.
But it's a bit tricky, I admit.

So I'd like to recommend to anybody, who has problems configuring the mail shield, to spit the anger elsewhere but not into this forum, to read the help and then to keep on asking (not blaming) here.
It's worth it.

Why I say that? 10 days ago Avast 5 gave a virus alarm. I was unsure whether it was a false positive and used online scanners. Only one or two other av-programs showed results. Meanwhile all well known av-programs define the files as infected. Not bad for a free av-program to be one of the first ones detecting viruses, isn't it?
So try again, you'll be rewarded with a secure av-program.

[Hermite15]

OK, since the statement is that nothing is going to be solved within Avast, then nothing to do, so I'm not going to use it anymore. My problem solved.

Avast has nothing to solve here, but you obviously do. I'm completely fed up with all these redundant threads about the mail scanner, there are tens and tens and tens where the exact same things are being explained with one OP out of two saying that after all, it worked in 4.8 and not in 5.0 >>> Avast 5 is not Avast 4, period.  SSL mails were never scanned in V4 (unless you knew how to do it and I doubt those asking here for V5 ever heard of Stunnel ). And if some of you guys are too lazy to learn a few basics, stick to something simpler, or better, pick up a course about Windows and come back in a few years...may be.

 The amount of protection that Avast brings for free is absolutely amazing, so hearing here and there (and often) noobs complaining about the lack of help and saying "it's broken" when they hardly made the effort to open the UI is extremely upsetting sorry (just the title of this thread here )

another example: this post >>> http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=57031.msg491355#msg491355
the guy is going mad when he obviously has no understanding of what a mail client does, when he doesn't know that Thunderbird (like Firefox) work with profiles and if something's wrong with the settings (in the profile), reinstalling Thunderbird won't solve anything. I don't mind people who don't know. But I mind people who don't know and who post here with anger

[mhf]

+ 1 logos

It's like the soldier who marches right-left, right-left and says that all the rest of the army are wrong because they march left-right, left-right...

or ... like the man who was fed up with walking over stones and thorns and decided to cover the world with a layer of leather and thus make everything smooth - it didn't occur to him to simply cover his two feet with a layer of leather...

[Sesame]

I must add to the comments on Avast 5 (Free) behaviour regarding email handling. I use Pop Peeper to check several of my POP accounts and it has always worked very well with Avast 4.x and I have been really satisfied with the way Avast integrate with that product. Then I installed Avast 5 when it was released officially and then one of the POP accounts I checked in Pop Peeper stopped to work/receive POP notifications on that particular computer. The other POP accounts still worked perfectly well though. Checking the "faulty" account from other computers worked all fine using Pop Peeper or other email applications. If I stopped the Mail Shield in Avast 5 it worked perfectly OK again to receive emails, then as I started the Mail shield again just that specific POP account failed again with error: "Login Error (Authentication failed.)"

So... all this has worked without any problems what so ever with Avast 4.x but as soon as I installed Avast 5 the problems started to appear. It's not only this issue that Avast 5 has introduced, I even had to deinstall Avast 5 on one of the other computers at home because it froze all the time, now with Avast 5 deinstalled the computer works perfectly well again (with another malware protection installed of course). This is extremely sad since I was very satisfied with what Avast 4.x offered in terms of protection and stability and I've always recommended Avast but I can't do that anymore without having doubts. One thing is good with Avast 5 though compared to Avast 4.x and that's the user interface. I really hope these issues are solved fast so that I can go back to use Avast 5 Free again on my home computers.

Using:
Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0.462
Vista with latest SP and all updates installed

If what you'd like to do is to use POP Peeper just like Avast! 4, then, try this manual option for Mail Shield.

First, find a file called "EmailShield.ini", which should be located

on XP systems:  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\EmailShield.ini

on Vista/7 systems:  C:\Program Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\EmailShield.ini

Then, open it with Notebad.  Under [Mail Scanner], add a line "IgnoreProcess=poppeeper.exe".
Save the changes to EmailShield.ini and close Notebad, tell yes to the question from Avast! Self-Defense module.
Go to the Avast! 5 GUI, Email Scanner tab and stop it and restart it.

This should let Mail Scanner ignore POP Peeper.