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General discussion

Virus Protection and E-mail Scan

Dec 3, 2003 8:36PM PST

Does anyone know of an e-mail scanner/virus protection that supports SSL connections? I have an AT&T mail address set up throught Outlook Express and cannot use Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2002 to scan e-mail for viruses since AT&T requires SSL connections to download mail. Or does anyone know how to configure OE to enable the scan. Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Marc

Discussion is locked

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Marc, Another Option I've Used...(Part 1)
Dec 4, 2003 3:42AM PST

In Outlook Express, or Outlook, turn off the "Preview Pane" which can cause viruses like Klez and BugBear to run automatically at preview. Next, create a special folder on your desktop for scanning potentially infected messages. (I've created one specially for the purpose called "Virus Stuff") Next, with Outlook Express/Outlook open, and before trying to open any messages, click once on the first message line to highlight it, then click on "File" in the upper left, choose "Save As" from the menu. When the "Save As" box loads, in the "Save In" line, use the drop down menu to navigate to the desktop "Virus Stuff" folder. Next, look to the "Save As Type" line in the lower section of the window and make sure it says: "Mail (.eml)" (or ?Message Format *.msg in Outlook), then click on the "Save" button. After the messages have been saved to the "Virus Stuff" folder, RIGHT click directly on the folder, choose "Scan For Viruses" and let your antivirus program do its stuff. If there are any infected HTML messages, they will be found BEFORE you try to open them. Delete any infected message from the Virus Stuff folder AND from Outlook Express/Outlook.

Read on....

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Marc, Another Option I've Used...(Part 2)
Dec 4, 2003 3:43AM PST

Next, while still in the ?Virus Stuff? folder, you need to also open each message by double clicking on it, and save each attachment to the same ?Virus Stuff? folder. This is done for a ?second? check of the attachments. Some antivirus scanners don?t do a ?perfect? job of scanning attachments within the .eml/.msg message files. After all the attachments are separated out from the messages, close the folder, then RIGHT click on the folder, choose ?Scan For Viruses? again. This will detect any infections that could be remaining undetected in the attachments themselves. Once again, delete any infected files from the ?Virus Stuff? folder AND from Outlook Express/Outlook. When you decide to open the files, open the ?Virus Stuff" folder, double click on the messages and they will opened using Outlook Express/Outlook. After you're done viewing them delete them from the "Virus Stuff" folder (its empty for the next usage) and you can then go back to the main Outlook Express/Outlook program and remove any unwanted/infected messages and save those that you want to keep BEFORE you?ve tried to open them.

I know this is a longer method to read your mail, but I have had to instruct an entire office in this particular method. We all use McAfee and get hundreds of e-mail messages every week. It?s the safest way we can find to make sure the messages are clean. We've been using this method for the last 5 years or so, and HAVE NOT had any "e-mail borne" viruses infect our machines. Quite a few have been detected this way, but none got in.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Re:Marc, Another Option I've Used...(Part 2)
Dec 4, 2003 11:39PM PST

Thanks for your help. My research of virus scanning software seemed to indicate that most of them don't support SSL connection required e-mail so this will help out a lot. Hopefully one of these companies will eventually start to support this type of e-mail. Obviously I'm not the only one encountering this problem. Thanks for your help.

Marc