Email Protection Assurance!

[Said Bakr]

Hello,

How can I get assured that PC Tools Antivirus always performs scan to my sended and received emails from an email client such as Outlook Express. There is no any system tray icon appears during receiving or sending emails.

[Mir]

Hi,

Make sure to keep PC Tools AntiVirus's Onguard Active and also confirm whether Email Guard within Onguard tools is ON. If PC Tools AntiVirus is running with fully active Onguard, then it means your all your emails are being scanned.

[Said Bakr]

I noticed that every scanned message by PC Tools Antivirus is signed by a paragraph tolds that. However, I noticed that emails from my Gmail account do not apply this feature. This make me to think that PC Tools Antivirus's Email Guard does not work for the Gmail account I have using Outlook Express.

Could this thought to be right?

[Petertron5000]

PCTAV's email guard does not working with web based emails. Only email software such as Outlook and Outlook Express.

Petertron5000

[Said Bakr]

PCTAV's email guard does not working with web based emails. Only email software such as Outlook and Outlook Express.

Petertron5000

Gmail I talked about is used by Outlook Express.

I noticed for Gmail that it uses SSL to connect to both SMTP and POP3 servers. Also it uses different ports that the default. i.e it uses 465 for SMTP and 995 for POP3. I already added these ports to Email Guard but it seems that Email Guard does not able to connect through SSL.

[solcroft]

As far as I recall, Google provides Gmail as an IMAP service, not POP3. And since the Email Guard doesn't provide an option to scan emails received via the IMAP protocol, I would assume this feature is not present.

Either way, I'd suggest you use the EICAR testfile to examine whether the Email Guard is working for you. Just attach and send it between two dummy accounts, or to yourself at the same address. The results would give the tech people more helpful info to pinpoint the problem, I think.

At any rate, I personally believe the Email Guard and Internet Guard are luxury features rather than necessary ones. If the resident on-access file scanner is any good, you're protected all the same, and all the email and internet scanners will accomplish are consume more system resources and cause files to be scanned multiple times.

[Said Bakr]

I'm sure that Gmail uses POP3 and SMTP. The configuration of Outlook Express was made by Gmail's configuration utility. Tha attached photo displays its properties on Outlook and it shows ,clearly, that it uses POP3 and SMTP.

[solcroft]

Ah, my bad. I was thinking about my uni email account, which uses IMAP...

Either way, have you used the EICAR testfile to see how things go? If you have a POP3 account with your ISP, I'd try it on that account as well if I were you, just to see if the problem is Gmail-specific.

[Said Bakr]

Yes, it is Gmail specific, because I have three other POP3 accounts that works properly on OutLook Express and the signature of PC Tools Antivirus is found on the footer of each received message by these accounts while Gmail is not apply this.

[AChen]

Hi Said,

This issue has been escalated to our developers regarding Gmail.

They will investigate this further.

[arilo76]

Hi
Recently I install PCt.Antivirus and when i was changing the doors for scan the emails "smtp" "pop3" for the gmail account(because is a different doors instead of the classics 25 , 110 ) my outlook couldn't download the emails, no problem in sending the emails but on receiving.

As quick fix i deleted my new smtp settings in the PCt.Antivirus and i kept all the others( after that no problem in sending or receiving).

My questions are if someone knows if there is a way to sort it out or not (increasing the time for the download from outlook is not the solution i try already)

Do you know if PCt.Antivirus protects messenger

Thanks
arilo76

[AChen]

Hi arilo76,

Gmail uses SSL connections to connect to the local email client to Gmail’s mail servers. SSL is basically speaking, encrypts the emails contents so AV cannot read it. This is a limitation that is not restricted to Gmail but for any connection that uses SSL.

This has been escalated and once I receive more info, will let you know.

[arilo76]

Hi Anthony
Unfortunately i have to deinstall Pct antivirus because didn't let me use internet only show me one page which it take about a minute to display and if i try to log to this forum or another web page after maybe ten minutes the page refresh and it takes for ever and the os crash at the beginning i thought was the firewall but it wasn't and i install another antivirus and the problem is gone.
So i know it is a know issue but if you need some help to sort it out I'm available.
I'm a big fan of spydoctor so for this reason install your antivirus and firewall which as fare is the best firewall i used

Thanks

[AChen]

Thanks for the offer to help us further, what browser are you using when the refreshing occurs?

Just as you mentioned the slowing down of the internet/not being able to connect to the internet is a known issue and will be resolved within the next version of PCTAV, which should be released some time in February.

A workaround is to disable the 'Internet Guard'.

We are happy to see you enjoy using Spyware Doctor and the Firewall Plus.

Cheers,
Anthony

[PC-Pete]

Hi all

I had not bothered much with the email scanning feature of PCTAV, having turned off all but the "File Guard". However having read this thread I thought I'd better try it. Results as follows:

PC number 1. XP Pro SP2 OEM. OE and Thunderbird installed, Same behaviour cycle exhibited by both.

Email Guard ON
messages start downloading but just stop after a few
Close and re-open OE or TBird.
try downloading messages again but stalls at first message
Switch EG OFF
can now download messages again - but not being scanned
Stop downloading
Switch EG ON again
messages start downloading but just stop after a few
....and so the cycle continues

PC number 2. also XP Pro SP2 OEM. OE only.
Email Guard ON
messages download in OE - no apparent problem
However - no annotation at end of messages re having been scanned by PCTAV so I sent through EICAR.COM attachment as a test.
I was able to receive and save EICAR.COM without any intervention but
PCTAV did quarantine the file when I tried to open it.
Also, this behaviour consistent after 3 reboots.

Pete

[AChen]

Thanks for the additional info PC-Pete. Our developers have resolved the issue with the email guard and a new version will be released some time this month.