Manually setup AVG Email Scanner

If you want to use an alternative Email client such as Thunderbird to Outlook with AVG Antivirus, you have to setup the Email Scanning function manually. This is really not all that difficult. What you are doing is basically setting up AVG to be a proxy between you and your mail server.

The first thing you need to get is your ISP's mail server info. So, for example, if your mail client's POP3 server is pop3.example.com, and your SMTP server is smtp.example.com, then you would do this.

Open AVG, and click on Email Scanner.
Main Screen

Under Installed Plugins, have Personal Email Scanner highlighted, and hit 'Properties'.
E-Mail Scanner

Now go to the Servers tab. click on ADD.
E-Mail Scanner Setup

Under Server Type, select POP3. Now click on Connection in the left menu, under 'Type of login', select 'Fixed Host' and enter in your ISP's POP3 server, in this example it would be pop3.example.com. Under 'Additional Settings', set the local port to 5110.
POP3 Server Type

Now do the same thing basically for the SMTP server. Open AVG, and click on Email Scanner. Under Installed Plugins, have Personal Email Scanner highlighted, and hit 'Properties'. Now go to the Servers tab. click on ADD. Under Server Type, select SMTP. Now click on Connection in the left menu, under 'Type of login', select 'Fixed Host' and enter in your ISP's SMTP server, in this example it would be smtp.example.com. Under 'Additional Settings', set the local port to 5025.

Now when you setup your email client, you will not set it up to use your ISP's servers, you will set it up to receive/send mail through 127.0.0.1 or localhost and the port number that the email scanner is listening on. So, you would go into your email client and replace your POP3 server with 127.0.0.1 or localhost, and you must change the PORT number to 5110. Do the same thing for your SMTP server, replace it with 127.0.0.1 or localhost, and change that PORT number to 5025.

Make sure you also have AVG tag the messages as scanned so you can see if it is working, open AVG, and click on Email Scanner, then click on 'Configure'. Under 'E-Mail Scanning', make sure for both Incoming and Outgoing mail, check mail and certify mail options are checked.

That is about it, if you want to setup another email account, follow the same directions for the POP3 server but incrememnt the PORT number, e.g. 5111, then use that PORT in your email client to receive mail.

Since the release of AVG 7 Free edition, the directions for both the Pro and Free edition are the same.

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