What's happening is that the data connection between your e-mail program and the e-mail server is encrypted. The purpose of this is to prevent anything and anybody from being able to make any sense of the data being transmitted with that connection, other than the sending program and the receiving program. Thus hackers can't read the data being transmitted.
Since nothing can make sense of that data being transferred except the e-mail program, AVG is unable to scan it.
The easiest solution to this, is to turn off sending and receiving e-mail via encrypted connections (SSL). This is fine if you are not worried about the security of the connection.
| If you want to stop using encrypted connections (SSL), for your e-mail, then click on your e-mail program here for the instructions: |
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If you want to learn more and/or you want to keep your e-mail data connections secure, then read on. |
AVG intercepts the e-mail program's request to receive e-mail, AVG then receives the e-mail itself, scans it, then passes it on to the e-mail program if the e-mail is clean. The e-mail program is usually none the wiser that this is going on, and AVG makes sure that the e-mail program never sees malware. It is a process that makes receiving e-mail very safe. Ditto for sending e-mail.
Now comes the problem with the encrypted data connection. AVG is now left out of the loop, and cannot scan the e-mail before the e-mail program receives it. We can hope that AVG will detect the malware after the e-mail program receives the e-mail, and before you open the e-mail. This may be what most security software does.
General description of the solution:We set up a special e-mail server in AVG which uses the secure connection to the specific e-mail server. We tell AVG to listen for the e-mail program using a non-standard port like 5300. Then we tell the e-mail program to NOT use an encrypted data connection, to use the local host as the e-mail server (so it will talk to only AVG), and to use that non-standard port 5300.
With this work-around, the e-mail is now getting to AVG on your computer via an encrypted data connection, AVG is able to scan it, then pass it on to the e-mail program. The opposite for sending e-mail.
Go into the AVG menu, Tools: Advanced settings.
In the advanced settings, tunnel down: E-mail Protection: Servers: POP3. We are going to deal with incoming mail first.
Press the button on the right side that says Add new server. Type in a name for this server.
In the screenshot below, you will see that the POP e-mail server I use is mail.spamcop.net, so I called the server "Spamcop receiving SSL".
You will type in a different POP server, of course, and have a different name, but all the other settings will be the same:
Click the Apply button to save these settings.
Now we need to do something similar for sending e-mails.
This time click on SMTP under E-mail Protection: Servers. Again, click Add new server, and type in a name for the server.
Note that the port numbers are different from the POP server we create before. This is as it should be.
In general, what we will do is tell the e-mail program to look for and send mail via AVG, instead of via the external servers. We do this by setting the servers in the e-mail program to 127.0.0.1 (which is your computer locally), and setting the port numbers to be 5300 for POP & 5400 for SMTP.
Since it will look different for different e-mail programs, choose your e-mail program to see instructions & webshots for your e-mail program:
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