AVG and Incoming E-Mail Scanning

[Nomad]

Well, this is the first time THIS has happend (in at least a year or so of
using AVG). Immediately after receiving an e-mail (some stupid Pay-pal junk
mail thing), AVG scanned it (by itself, with out opening or reading it) and
moved it to the virus vault. A box came up and informed me that it had done
so. One would assume then, that because I received this (AVG - moved to
virus vaultwarning box), others have as well... comments?

 

[John Blaustein]

What version of AVG are your using?

I get those PayPal ".scr" viruses almost daily. The free version of AVG
does not scan incoming mail in Outlook Express. However, if I try to save
the attachments in those e-mail, AVG catches them immediately.

John

 

[Nomad]

Actually John, I use the free AVG, v 6.0 (6.0.558) + OE and I too was
surprised at the pop-up warning. I've had AVG (like you) catch some bad
stuff when attempting to open an attachment, but nothing like this.
--Nomad

 

[John Blaustein]

Nomad,

I was under the impression that e-mail scanning didn't even work in the free
edition of AVG with OE, so I've had it disabled. It's my impression that
the resident virus scanner (of AVG or any other AV program) will catch
malicious code that arrives in an e-mail before it can do any harm. That
is, if an infected attachment arrives, while it's not caught from within OE
as the message arrives, it will be caught if you try to save it to disk.

Hard to say why your system caught that particular message. Maybe something
to do with the security settings in OE.

John