Weird e-mail virus scanner thing

[Pidesco]

Every once in a while my e-mail virus scanner (AVG) randomly starts up, and begins to check e-mails for some strange, unknown account. This sounds like some kind of Trojan, but I really don't know why this is happening. Does anyone have a clue?

[metadigital]

Yeah, sounds like a trojan has created an (Outlook) email account for nefarious purposes, and is being detected by AVG when it activates.

 

Try scanning the registry with a cleaner, or with another AV application.

[Accelerator]

looks like you have a problem-o...

 

Please follow these steps:

 

Download all these on-demand scanners and run them on your computer and see if they find anything. If they do, report the name of the file and the virus name here.

 

Dr.Web CureIT!

MicroWorld MWAV Free scanner

ArcaBit ArcaMicroScan

 

And an advice, if you are using the free edition of AVG, I recommend you to upgrade to the paid versions. They offer much better protection and are worth the money.

[kalimeeri]

Not saying that it isn't a good idea to scan the system ... but it might not necessarily mean you have a virus. After AVG forced an upgrade to a newer version, the e-mail scanner went nuts on my computer like that. No other changes, no virus, not anywhere. But every minute or so it would go into a frenzy, and tie up the whole internet connection. AVG itself found no virus on a full scan, nor did various online scanners.

 

I never did find out why. The previous versions had always worked very well, but the newer one would never work for long before acting up. After a number of uninstall/reinstalls failed to solve the problem, I blew it away for good and got another anti-virus product. It too found nothing. I presume AVG's updated method of e-mail scanning conflicted with another running software process--but whatever it was, well, there are a lot of anti-virus packages out there to choose from.

Edited May 15, 2007 by kalimeeri

[Accelerator]

kalimeeri, it still wouldn't hurt to go ahead and scan the system for traces of malware. After all, no AntiVirus detects everything, so its better to be safe. If the virus scans came up safe, then the problems are likely not caused by malware.

Edited May 18, 2007 by Accelerator

[kalimeeri]

kalimeeri, it still wouldn't hurt to go ahead and scan the system for traces of malware. After all, no AntiVirus detects everything, so its better to be safe. If the virus scans came up safe, then the problems are likely not caused by malware.

 

Oh, I absolutely agree. Test out every known virus scanner, and run Ad-aware/Spybot as well. I would (and did). Just saying that after all that if you still come up dry, there is a possibility of a conflict within AVG. Most people can and do run it without any problems, but it does take exception to a few lucky souls.