On 16 Mar 2000, at 21:54, Alan Guy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I have NO experience with it at all, but I've heard it's good,
> absolutely adequate, HOWEVER I've heard it does NOT scan email
> messages in 'real time' as they're being downloaded into your
> email client. IF this is true, I can only assume that one has to
> scan individual email messages manually - is this true?
>
> If it is, that would be ponderous for users on a number of lists
> like myself. I open from 50 upwards to 150 email messages a
> night. I couldn't imagine having to scan each one manually,
> individually - before opening.

Most of the e-mail messages do not contain executable attachments,
and thus if you set your e-mail program not to open such attachments
automatically (most of the e-mail programs can be set that way), then
you only have to scan those who have attachments, (and this is a
minority of the messages).

My second comment, is that while I do recommend searching such
attachments manually, real-time scanning, will scan them before they
are about to be executed, so it does give you a reasonable defence
against viruses attached in e-mail.
BTW, Mcafee who has an e-mail scanner does not check uudecoded
attachments, only MIME-base64 encoded attachments. Thus it doesn't
give you a full e-mail protection (but it doesn't come on account of the
system protection that should catch those viruses during execution).

Uzi

             PCSOFT maintains many useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                     http://nospin.com/pc/files.html