[OT] Thunderbird and Viruses

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gord McFee
  • Start date Start date
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Gord McFee

I know there are some Thunderbird and Mozilla users here, so here goes.

Does anyone know if there is something in the file structure, or
otherwise, of Thunderbird that causes the following problem?

I have an antivirus program installed with email scan enabled (I cannot
disable it). Every other email program I have tried has no problems
with this. Lately I have experimented with Outlook Express, Agent,
40tude Dialog amongst others. I have various filters set up, and when
an email with a kleg virus arrives, I filter on size (more than 140 K)
and it automatically goes to a Spam folder.

With Thunderbird I can't do this. As soon as the email hits the Inbox,
I get an antivirus message that the file (actually it ends up being the
entire Inbox) is infected and will be deleted. As I said, I cannot
disable the antivirus email scan, so am wondering if there is another
solution. What puzzles me is that it is only Thunderbird that does
this; all the other email programs handle the infected email with no
problem.

Could it be something in the file structure of Thunderbird, or the way
it handles attachments that causes this?

Any ideas/fixes welcome.
 
Gord said:
I know there are some Thunderbird and Mozilla users here, so here goes.

Does anyone know if there is something in the file structure, or
otherwise, of Thunderbird that causes the following problem?

I have an antivirus program installed with email scan enabled (I cannot
disable it). Every other email program I have tried has no problems
with this. Lately I have experimented with Outlook Express, Agent,
40tude Dialog amongst others. I have various filters set up, and when
an email with a kleg virus arrives, I filter on size (more than 140 K)
and it automatically goes to a Spam folder.

With Thunderbird I can't do this. As soon as the email hits the Inbox,
I get an antivirus message that the file (actually it ends up being the
entire Inbox) is infected and will be deleted. As I said, I cannot
disable the antivirus email scan, so am wondering if there is another
solution. What puzzles me is that it is only Thunderbird that does
this; all the other email programs handle the infected email with no
problem.

Could it be something in the file structure of Thunderbird, or the way
it handles attachments that causes this?

Any ideas/fixes welcome.
Click to expand...

I think you can set the rules up for "if virusmail then _do not download
from server_", or "leave on server. At least last time I used Mozilla
mail I could.
 
"Gord McFee" <[email protected]> wrote:
Click to expand...
I know there are some Thunderbird and Mozilla users here, so here goes.
Click to expand...
Does anyone know if there is something in the file structure, or
otherwise, of Thunderbird that causes the following problem?
Click to expand...
I have an antivirus program installed with email scan enabled (I cannot
disable it). Every other email program I have tried has no problems
with this. Lately I have experimented with Outlook Express, Agent,
40tude Dialog amongst others. I have various filters set up, and when
an email with a kleg virus arrives, I filter on size (more than 140 K)
and it automatically goes to a Spam folder.
Click to expand...
With Thunderbird I can't do this. As soon as the email hits the Inbox,
I get an antivirus message that the file (actually it ends up being the
entire Inbox) is infected and will be deleted. As I said, I cannot
disable the antivirus email scan, so am wondering if there is another
solution. What puzzles me is that it is only Thunderbird that does
this; all the other email programs handle the infected email with no
problem.
Click to expand...
Could it be something in the file structure of Thunderbird, or the way
it handles attachments that causes this?
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem. I suppose the problem is filtering, other
than spam. My filters were set to grab any massge containing ".pif,
..doc, other virus extensions, and delete them on identification.

AntiVir had the same problem, an alert window came up and since the
message was already deleted no actions worked. I ended up chunking the
user set filters and dumping the trash after making sure there are no
real emails in it.

Try running without external filters, such as your > 140k filter, and
see if it doesn't straighten it out. I think this is a problem of two
programs trying to handle a file at the exactly the same time.

The spam filters work pretty darned good and you cannot execute a
malware from Thunderbird, so you're safe in removing this filter. Or,
change the filter to delete message from pop server instead of moving
the message.

I'm still using v0.6 btw. I have v0.7 but haven't taken the time to
install it.
 
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