Does your email service screen for viruses?
All incoming email for your Web hosting account is checked for viruses using the ClamAV antivirus scanner, with virus patterns updated hourly.
This system prevents many email viruses from reaching your mailbox, and there's no extra charge for our antivirus scanning service.
You should still use antivirus software on your own computer. Using your own antivirus scanner will give you an extra level of defense and will protect your computer against viruses from other sources, such as software you download or Web pages you visit.
Blocked filename patterns
In addition to checking individual files for viruses, we also block all emailed file attachments that have filenames ending with:
We block these types even if they’re included within “.zip” files or another compressed format.
In addition, we block:
- “.zip” archives that contain only a single “.js” or “.img” file
- “.rar” archives that contain any “.js” files
- “.js” files that are not within an archive
- “.ace” files that are not within an archive
- Word and Excel documents that contain “macros”
... since these are a common malware pattern.
Why are certain patterns blocked even if they aren’t malicious?
We do this because these files are often used to send new viruses, and blocking them prevents viruses from spreading even before new virus patterns are seen and added. The number of malicious files that match these rules vastly outweighs the number of legitimate files. Gmail blocks almost exactly the same list, for example.
If you need to send or receive an attachment with a filename that’s blocked, the file can be renamed to send it, then renamed after it’s received.
If you need to send or receive a Word or Excel document containing macros, one possibility is to send it in a password-protected “.zip” file, which won’t be blocked.
Can you unblock these so I can send a legitimate file?
Unfortunately, we can’t unblock these — but even if we could, it wouldn’t make any difference, because the message would almost certainly be blocked by the other mail server involved, because most other services block the same thing (Gmail also blocks these, for example).
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