benhenry
10-27-2003, 07:22 PM
Several seasons ago my wonderful Aunts got bitten by a bug. A virus that "spoofed" the sender's address to inspire confidence that the email was safe. They unknowingly passed this virus back and forth to each other and to many other family members. Since that time I have been helping them in small ways to be better protected, more cautious, safer.
At the time they were infected they had a well-known bloatware anti-virus program that included an email scanning function in addition to real-time virus scanning. They assumed they were protected.
They were not. The software provided no protection to them because one of the first activities of the virus was to disable the scan engine of that particular brand of software, and a few others.
It occurred to me that if there had been a second virus scanner on their computer (as many people have) they would have had a better chance of catching the virus before any harm was done to their systems or others.
But it is not recommended to have two real-time virus scanners operating simultaneously. Resources consumed, efficiency, and reliability would all be issues.
And yet, user friendliness should be a major consideration. A redundant virus scan for email should be easily accessible. If it couldn't be a "set it and forget it" type of scan... how about a simple right-click context menu option from within the email client that would provide an option: "Scan for Virus"? This would allow a secondary (Grisoft AVG for example) virus scan from a different scan engine in case the major one was a target.
The "big" virus scan engine would still be operational; monitoring the pop3 port, or monitoring attachments as they are opened, depending on the vendor's strategy.
So I set out to find an email client/anti-virus combination that offered a right-click context menu option for selecting a suspicious email and sending it to a virus scanner.
I have not yet found that option in any combination I have tried. My resources are limited to the many free versions and trial versions that I found. And it may be that more advanced commercial software provides this level of synchronization between email client and virus scan software, but none have come to my attention so far.
If you managed to get here... thank you for reading! I realize that this post is probably getting quite long. And I have a meatloaf in the oven that is frantically calling to me. I will try to continue later with a separate post:
An email virus scanning test. Part Two. A workaround. (http://www.mypcclinic.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=1739)
At the time they were infected they had a well-known bloatware anti-virus program that included an email scanning function in addition to real-time virus scanning. They assumed they were protected.
They were not. The software provided no protection to them because one of the first activities of the virus was to disable the scan engine of that particular brand of software, and a few others.
It occurred to me that if there had been a second virus scanner on their computer (as many people have) they would have had a better chance of catching the virus before any harm was done to their systems or others.
But it is not recommended to have two real-time virus scanners operating simultaneously. Resources consumed, efficiency, and reliability would all be issues.
And yet, user friendliness should be a major consideration. A redundant virus scan for email should be easily accessible. If it couldn't be a "set it and forget it" type of scan... how about a simple right-click context menu option from within the email client that would provide an option: "Scan for Virus"? This would allow a secondary (Grisoft AVG for example) virus scan from a different scan engine in case the major one was a target.
The "big" virus scan engine would still be operational; monitoring the pop3 port, or monitoring attachments as they are opened, depending on the vendor's strategy.
So I set out to find an email client/anti-virus combination that offered a right-click context menu option for selecting a suspicious email and sending it to a virus scanner.
I have not yet found that option in any combination I have tried. My resources are limited to the many free versions and trial versions that I found. And it may be that more advanced commercial software provides this level of synchronization between email client and virus scan software, but none have come to my attention so far.
If you managed to get here... thank you for reading! I realize that this post is probably getting quite long. And I have a meatloaf in the oven that is frantically calling to me. I will try to continue later with a separate post:
An email virus scanning test. Part Two. A workaround. (http://www.mypcclinic.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=1739)