Trojan in Email

[veegee]

The other day I attempted to forward an email and after clicking 'send', got an alert from Avast that a trojan has been blocked but that nothing else needs to be done.  Tried to delete it but it wouldn't delete and was sitting in the 'outbox' and asking if I want to send it!!  I deleted it.

That email in question was opened about three times prior to sending it without any alert from Avast, but I later noticed that the word 'virus' was part of the subject line.

I ran several scans and PC is clean.  Why wouldn't I have been alerted when opening the email but only on sending it?  Does Avast read parts of the email???
Thanks for anyone's explanation of this.

[DavidR]

Normally if it has Virus in the subject, the alert is usually related to an attachment and usually that attachment is removed.

It will look in the email content for possible malicious/suspicious scripts (to potentially malicious sites), etc.

You could check the avastUI, Mail Shield, Shield log and see what information on detections are contained there. If that is empty look in the mail shield log file, C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\log\Mail.log (XP location).