To use e mail scanning or not?

[Anthony A]

I recently installed Thunderbird. I was using web mail and e mail scanning by my anti virus program was a non issue. Now that I installed Thunderbird I have activated the e mail scanning component of AVG. It seems this is not necessary and a case can be made that it's actually a bad thing to do. How many people using an e mail program installed on their machine use the e mail scanning from their anti virus program? Do you just let the real time/shield protect your machine? Here is a link to an article in the Thunderbird knowledge base about some of the pros and cons of using the e mail scanner.

 

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Email_scanning_-_pros_and_cons

[hazelnut]

I do not have my av scan my email, I rely on the guard/real time component of the program to 'watch over me'.

 

When I had avast I tried the email scanner on but it slowed the email download to a crawl for me.

 

Also the best email scanner to have is probably myself, not opening attachments etc from unknown senders.

 

I do have an email spam guard however with my Online Armor which adds the words 'spam shield' in front of the email header, so I don't even have to bother looking at them.

[Tunerz]

Just temporarily use the webmail if your AV program with email scanning feature has "conflicts" with the messages in your inbox. If possible, use Sandboxie to sandbox your email client (with the email scanning turned off) to make sure whether that file attachment is safe or not.

[rridgely]

I let AVG scan my email.

Its never been a problem.. I would turn it off but why not let it run.(it doesn't interfere or slow anything down from what I've seen)

I don't really get spam on my gmail accounts though.

[Anthony A]

I let AVG scan my email.

Its never been a problem.. I would turn it off but why not let it run.(it doesn't interfere or slow anything down from what I've seen)

I don't really get spam on my gmail accounts though.

 

 

Yeah AVG is very light on resources so that's not a problem but the other things listed in that knowledge base article I linked provide a case to not scan the e mail.

 

Gmail scans your mail when it gets to them. My ISP scans e mails before they get to Thunderbird. If something makes it by these scanners it won't do any damage unless I open the mail and I won't do that. If I did the real time protection/shield of AVG should take care of it. Seems the e mail scanner is over kill.

[fireryone]

I use NOD32's email scanner, It's never been a problem and scans fast while downloading.

 

It's the only place, I've seen a virus try to come through in quite a while.

[rridgely]

I guess something could still get by though. To be honest I never put much thought into it.

With avg it doesn't use any more ram to scan and I get a nice little box that pops up and says my mail is clean. Like I said before with the accounts that I actually get sent to thunderbird I never get mail from people I don't want mail from anyway.(I use a yahoo account to sign up for stuff.)