djst's nest

Why store your mail locally? You could have avoided this problem in the first place with an IMAP-based mail account rather than a POP3 one.

I highly recommend fastmail.fm, their IMAP implementation is first rate, and they're very Mozilla-friendly (e.g. MIDAS support in the web interface, IDLE support for Thunderbird/Mail&News)

Prog.

Yep this happened to me too but with NAV luckily I had recent backups

The freeware program PC INSPECTOR File Recovery does a great job, if the files are marked as deleted and not overwritten.

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

ouch, "thanks" for warning, I just setup Avast for my family (they use Thunderbird), I believe I'll deinstall it then.

I've been toying with the idea of having a go at implementing maildir storage backend for mozmail -- it would seem the most robust way to deal with this issue. With my track record of getting to things though, I'll probably be starting around late 2006.

I have found AVG Antivirus to work great! http://www.grisoft.com/

I have used it for a number of years and never had a problem. The free version is great and now with version 7 you can scan individual directories.

Chris

Something similar to this happened to me with NAV. But I was able to pull the file out of quarantine, so nothing was lost. Does AVAST have such a quarantine system? If so, you might find your INBOX there.

These days, I explicitly switch off any email scanning, and I manually exclude my Thunderbird profile folder from any virus scanning.

I don't trust virus scanners with email. If given the opportunity, they will just mess things up there.

I've been using Avast for over a year and never had any problems with Mozilla Mail. Mind you I only use the realtime scanning plugin, not the mail one.

I also make sure I read the dialogs whenever I get a virus warning. ;)

Yeah, I've been using Avast for years too. The thing seems to be that if it detects a virus in a mail message, it will want to delete (or move) the whole mail file (folder). That, I guess, is what happened here. My mistake was checking the option to delete any virus it finds. I don't know what I was thinking, but I do think Avast should ask one more time before actually wiping the files it wants to delete.

What's the use of an AntiVirus?
Ah you're on Windows! Never mind.

:)

jerome, you should be prepared. There are viruses for Linux too you know.

This happened to me with NAV multiple times using an IMAP account (with the option of storing the inbox locally for offline use). The solution I found is this:

* Turn off the option that automatically checks any file that comes in.
* Check for viruses once a week, after making sure that any junk/unwanted mail is not in the inbox

The first thing I do after installing any virus scanner is to add the storage dir/file of my mail client to the exclusion list... Unless I save the attachments, no virus can harm me anyway...

What version of Avast! was this? Whichever one, you should head to their support forum (http://forum.avast.com/) and tell them. The support on there is excellent.

Phil (not quite ready to ditch Avast!)

My advice is to not leave emails in your inbox. That way if a virus comes in, all you stand to lose is that which you haven't recently moved. This may be late, but has always worked like a charm here. My inbox has been damaged like yours has a couple of times, but at max a couple of emails were lost.

A related suggestion is to folder all email. I have "Friends" and "Family" directories. "Work" directories (with company subdirectories) and a "Mozilla" directory, etc.

I would say what (free) AV you use depends on which Windows OS you're running. I've used both AVG and Avast, but I usually check out http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/ to see how they've both performed in the recent tests for my OS before I install. The only telling statistic for me is that Avast failed for WinXP in June 2004, and AVG passed. But otherwise, I think both products work quite well.

> jerome, you should be prepared. There are viruses
> for Linux too you know.

David, tell me one "in the wild" virus for linux.

--Thomas

I used to have a bad experience with Avast 3 and 4, that it monotonically crash my Windows, from 98 to XP. In the other way, AVG is super stable (in my experience, much better than Trend and NAV) and have frequent updates (only true for the recent years, but it's enough).

> tell me one "in the wild" virus for linux

staog, 1996
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/staog.shtml

bliss, 1997
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/bliss.shtml

slapper, 2002
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/slapper.shtml
http://www.f-secure.com/slapper/

yeah, join the club:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116443

you are not alone, bug 116443

byron: staog and bliss never got anywhere, and slapper is a network worm, not a virus.

Rick Moen's comments on this topic are well worth reading.
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=virus

I thin kthis is a problem where mail programs don't store the mail in separate files, TB vs OUtlook for example.

L lost all my e mails