Is it necessary to close Thunderbird when disabling antiviru

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slickrcbd
Posts: 553
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 1:57 am

Is it necessary to close Thunderbird when disabling antiviru

Post by slickrcbd »

The company I'm working for is making us watch some mandatory training videos we are forced to watch at home on our own time, though when we print a certificate they will give an hours wages.
The problem is that the site has problems, and the only way to get the darned thing to work is to disable most of my internet security, including the ad blocker and antivirus.
Oh, and I also have to click on a link in an e-mail to get to the darned thing.
It's a real mess, but I have to do it.

Thunderbird is set to poll several e-mail accounts at regular intervals. If it goes off and gets some e-mails while watching the video with the antivirus turned off, will it later scan the e-mails when the antivirus is available again or when I actually switch over and open them, or do I need to copy the link in the e-mail , and then close Thunderbird for my protection before pasting it into Internet Explorer (won't work with Firefox).
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DanRaisch
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Re: Is it necessary to close Thunderbird when disabling anti

Post by DanRaisch »

In most cases there will be nothing in an email that will cause problems unless you click on a link or access an attachment and open that. In either event, the anti-virus, if it's worth its salt, should be scanning those activities. In other words, it's not critical that you close Thunderbird while watching the video with the anti-virus disabled. The fact that you need to use the browser with the anti-virus off to view that video should be more worrisome than anything relating to TB.
slickrcbd
Posts: 553
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 1:57 am

Re: Is it necessary to close Thunderbird when disabling anti

Post by slickrcbd »

Oh, believe me, I know about the issues with disabling security. I have to add three domains to the "trusted sites", turn off the antivirus and the pop-up blocker in IE to get the darn thing to work.
I can get it to partially work with Chrome, provided I also disable my ad blocker as well as all the other stuff, but then it doesn't register that I actually completed the videos and refuses to report back that I have and give me the stupid certificate. I can't get it to work at all in Firefox, even with add-ons disabled.

Unfortunately, all this mess is being handled by an office in Texas, and I'm in Illinois. They don't want to hear it.

I was just worried about leaving t-bird open with antivirus turned off.
slickrcbd
Posts: 553
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 1:57 am

Re: Is it necessary to close Thunderbird when disabling anti

Post by slickrcbd »

I was just reviewing my old thread.
I wanted to say something to DanielRaisch.
Funny thing, I remember this, and I was the only person at my location that was actually able to get the videos to work and print the certificate.
My boss had me sit aside and write a how-to guide on how to access the videos in the office so that everybody else could get it done, then we found out that at least three other locations in Illinois was having the same problem.
Corporate HQ in TX on the other hand was in denial about the problems, even when people called tech support. They apparently accused everybody here of being idiots for not being able to get it to work until my step-by-step instructions were passed on by our regional manager (I wound up getting a copy of them in a mass e-mail from him).
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tanstaafl
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Re: Is it necessary to close Thunderbird when disabling anti

Post by tanstaafl »

Thunderbird doesn't know how to scan for viruses/malware. If you have a anti-virus scanner that is integrated with Thunderbird I don't know when it will scan messages because that is implementation specific. However, if its not integrated, I'd expect it to scan a mbox file (whats used to store the messages for a mail folder) whenever its opened. The inbox folders are automatically opened upon startup and would be re-opened if Thunderbird downloads any new mail. I'm assuming you're using POP accounts.

If you disable/uncheck view -> display attachments inline, use view -> message body as -> plain text and don't click on a link or open an attachment you're pretty safe with anti-virus scanning disabled. Don't forget your email provider also scans for viruses/malware and typically uses better software for that that you do.
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