Thunderbird and ESET End Point anti virus

[windspeed]

Is Thunderbird secure?
I'm locked into using ESET End point anti virus at the moment and I have always been a TB fan and user but I read lately that ESET no longer 'supports' TB.
Can someone explain the consequences of this to me please?
What do we need TB to be secure from? (Am I right to assume that any potential virus is in an actual email I receive and not in the program (TB) that delivers that email.... or am I missing something?)
What does ESET or any other anti virus do? I assume it's job is to check the emails once the postman has delivered them?
What does it mean when ESET says it no longer 'supports' TB?
Thanks
(a very confused) Chris

[DanRaisch]

What does it mean when ESET says it no longer 'supports' TB?

ESET has a table on their site which concludes with the following statement:

* ESET Endpoint Security version 5 and 6 and ESET Smart Security version 5 through version 9 will scan POP3/POP3S and IMAP/IMAPS email for the presence of malicious code while using Mozilla Thunderbird 6 and later or other email clients not listed above. Email will not be scanned for spam, however.

Thunderbird's current release version is 52.1.1 so ESET is apparently not keeping that table up to date. None the less, note that that statement indicates that the anti-spam function of ESET is not functional with Thunderbird but the scanning of messages for viruses and other types of malicious code remains active. Spam is annoying but generally does not represent a threat unless a user clicks on a link in a Spam message which leads to a malicious site, at which point the danger is coming through the default browser and not the email. ESET should then be effective if compatible with the browser.

[windspeed]

Hi, Thanks for the update. I gather this to mean that TB will be safe but I might need to do a bit more spam filtering within TB. This confirms what ESET said as well. Cheers