avast! 5 and Thunderbird - advice needed please

Sublime_2

I've just installed avast, but I've got the following message:

"avast! has detected a secure connection from your mail program (process thunderbird.exe) to the pop server 65.55.111.190 (live.com).

This type of connection cannot be checked for viruses. Please disable SSL/TLS in your mail client so that the Mail Scanner can scan your mail. The Mail Scanner will provide the SSL/TLS security itself."

Should I do as suggested, or disable mail scanning in avast. Has anybody else encountered this at all?

I'm using Thunderbird, as I don't want to use windows live mail. I'd much appreciate any help.

Lil306

Sublime wrote: »

I've just installed avast, but I've got the following message:

"avast! has detected a secure connection from your mail program (process thunderbird.exe) to the pop server 65.55.111.190 (live.com).

This type of connection cannot be checked for viruses. Please disable SSL/TLS in your mail client so that the Mail Scanner can scan your mail. The Mail Scanner will provide the SSL/TLS security itself."

Should I do as suggested, or disable mail scanning in avast. Has anybody else encountered this at all?

I'm using Thunderbird, as I don't want to use windows live mail. I'd much appreciate any help.

Avast is a REALLY good a/v program (albeit a flaming CPU / Memory hog) so it is fairly safe to do as it asks. It's basically saying to disable the relevant connection settings in your mail program and Avast will then be able to scan the files, and Avast will also provide those settings.

In Thunderbird, Tools > Email Accounts > Choose your account > server settings

Where it says security (probably SSL / TLS) change to None, then Avast shouldn't complain. If you can no longer connect to emails just renable it and disable the Avast Mail Integration, but from experience it will still work.

Sublime_2

I've used older versions of avast, so this must be a new feature. I was going to change SSL/TLS to none originally, but was a bit worried about security, after somebody got spam through after doing that. Maybe there were other issues.

Have you done this, or would it be safer to let Thunderbird handle the encryption and turn off mail scanning in avast.

I am tempted to set encryption to none, but I would like to know your experience with letting avast handle mail scanning.

Thanks for replying.

Lil306

There is no issues with letting Avast handle the security instead of the mail client, the mail client is just the connection protocol. Avast acts as the relay, so Thunderbird sends emails (unsecured), which are then relayed through avast (secured by avast) and scanned aswell....

I don't personally use Avast anymore.... this isn't because I think the program is crap by any means, it's merely because I do a lot of online gaming, and I found it was slowing down my FPS in game and causing it to lag, I did disable it but then it would throw warnings up and annoy me

At the moment I use comodo firewall + av, I love comodos firewall, but it's antivirus is a bit iffy to say the least (needs a lot more training)....

Avast is certainly a good program, I'd recommend disabling the security and letting Avast handle it, you're still getting all the functionality and security but Avast is giving you better protection by scanning your emails too.

Sublime_2

I've just found some more info here.

So maybe I can have encryption, and use the avast scanner. Looks like I'll need to do some messing about.

Lil306

Sublime wrote: »

I've just found some more info here.

So maybe I can have encryption, and use the avast scanner. Looks like I'll need to do some messing about.

Yep, I took a quick look, looks like it's just getting you to change port numbers through alternative connections so you can have the security

The only problem I can forsee is some mail servers don't allow certain ports open
(or home ISPs)

Not much of an issue, only ones I think are a pain are Yahoo and Virgin. As for ISP's it can be any... you'll only find that out after you configure it.

P.S - Good searching on the forums, Avast forums are heavily techy so you usually always get the answers you need quicky