Learning Zone

Hi George,

AVG does not scan for spam. That’s not its purpose.

AVG installs itself as a “middleman” between OE and your Internet connection, so that all incoming mail and optionally all outgoing mail is scanned for viruses and unwanted programs. (You can see exactly which options are selected by right-clicking the AVG icon in the System Tray and opening the AVG User Interface. On the menu bar at the top, click on Tools and Advanced Options.)

To deal with spam you need either to use your own ISP’s spam filter or install one on your PC. There are a number of free ones available, such as MailWasher (http://www.mailwasher.net/).

Hi George,

ISPs like BT Yahoo can deliver email to you via two main routes. The one you are using (OE) downloads emails from the BT server to your PC’s hard disk using a protocol called POP3. Once downloaded, it’s deleted from the server.

The other method of accessing your email is commonly called webmail. You don’t use OE; instead you use your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) to connect to BT’s mail server and read your email messages there. The advantage of this method is that if you want to access your email from several different places, it’s always accessible.

You will need to use this second method to check your spam folder (it may be called “bulk mail”) on BT’s email server, using the username and password BT supplied to you.

You can “train” their spam filter by marking items which it should not have quarantined as spam as “not spam”; they should then get transferred to the Inbox folder so that OE can pick them up.

Hope that helps!