Upgrade for Free

Cybercrime is evolving. So is your protection. *Offer for existing members for the remainder of your subscription. Terms apply.

Applicable for: Windows

Learn more about customizing Email Antivirus Scan

Email Antivirus Scan protects you from the threats that are sent or received in email attachments. In the Email Antivirus Scan window, you can define how Norton should behave when it scans email messages. Based on the options you choose, Norton automatically scans the email messages that you send or receive.

Norton supports all email programs that use either POP3 or SMTP communications protocol.

Norton scans emails by monitoring the communications ports that are used for email and intercepting email transmissions. After incoming email messages have been scanned, they are passed along to the email program. If you download an email message with a large attachment, your email program might not receive a transmission for a few minutes. Your email program might time out as a result. If you turn on timeout protection, Norton regularly confirms the connection with your email program and prevents a timeout.

Timeout protection places hidden text at the top of your email messages. Your email program should remove this text.

You can select the following options in the Email Antivirus Scan window:

What to scan

You can decide what to scan using the following options:

Scan incoming email messages

Automatically scans any email message attachments that you receive for threats
Scan outgoing email messages

Automatically scans any email message attachments that you send for threats

How to increase protection

You can increase the email protection using the following options:

Scan outgoing messages for suspected worms

Turns on scanning to detect suspected worms in your outgoing email messages and alerts you if a threat is detected
How to respond when an outbound threat is found

If Norton detects a threat in an outgoing email message, you have the following options:
- Automatically remove (Recommended)
  
  Provides you the greatest protection by automatically removing detected suspected email worms from your computer without interacting with you
- Ask me what to do
  
  Provides you the greatest control when a suspected email worm is detected. You choose what to do at each phase of the risk response process. A summary window appears detailing all of the actions that were taken

What to do when scanning email messages

You can use the following options:

Protect against timeouts

Keeps your email client from displaying timeout errors when Norton scans large attachments
Display progress indicator

Displays a progress window while Norton scans your outgoing email messages

Need more help?

DocID: v15911615
Last modified: 07/25/2024

Was this article helpful?

Need more help?

Download

Manage my account

Buy & renew

Community

Support scams

Norton rescue tools

Think you have virus?

Problem launching on Windows