I've got two PCs running the same version of AV (not sure of the overall branded version, but "Help about" on the console shows 18.1.0.37), and both have experienced the pop-up message after attempting to send an Email "421 Unexpected failure, please try later". I'm not 100% certain, but I don't think I ever saw this with older versions (have been through several).
I found an earlier thread on here, and the person who replied gave feedback that it's a status coming back from the SMTP server and recommendations on fixing the mail settings. I'm very confident I don't have any systemic issues with Email, and this has happened trying to send messages of less than a couple of KB (so I know it's not huge attachments).
I'll accept that this is a mail server issue, but my questions are:
1) has the latest version of AV changed that how outgoing Email is scanned? I've had the same ISP (and mail configurations) for years, and have experienced the intermittent connection problem to the server. But I would see that in my mail client saying it had a problem, never with Norton AV being the one to complain about it.
2) if this is just the way this version works by default, is there a way to configure it to work like previous versions, so the mail client handles it? It seemed to be a lot less troublesome then (this pop-up is happening much more frequently than I'd think I have mail server problems, and it's resulting in sometimes having to try sending the same message 3 or more times before it works). Never had to do that before, and it would seem to be a pretty big coincidence that my ISP starts having a lot more mail server issues right after I upgrade AV.
3) I haven't explored it, but I presume I can configure AV to ignore outbound Emails entirely (and count on my other controls to keep me from getting and forwarding malware along). If I can, what the *real* risk with that?
4) If I can't get any of these to work, how difficult is it to downgrade to a previous version (never having done it)? This is becoming enough of a nuisance that I'd seriously consider it. :-(
Thanks in advance!
Hi shawnc1959,
This is an error reported by the server. Norton sits between your email client and the server, so it actually receives these notifications back from your ISP and displays them, as you indicated.
Although the message comes from the ISP, Norton can sometimes be the cause of the error if, for some reason, the connection should timeout while Norton is scanning your messages. In this case turning off outgoing email scanning would prevent the error situation. Often, however, this error simply indicates a temporary problem with the server.
You certainly should try disabling outgoing email scanning to see if it solves the issue. Doing so will have no effect on your security, since the outgoing scan simply protects recipients from any malicious files that you might send. It's a nice gesture but unnecessary for two reasons: 1) the chance of you sending an infected file is extremely remote because any malicious file known to Norton would have already been removed from your system by Auto-Protect, and 2) your recipients probably are, or should be, running AV software on their own systems anyway.
And just as a point of information: While there is no need to disable incoming email scanning to troubleshoot this issue concerning the sending of messages, doing so would also pose no increased security risk since all attachments are scanned by Auto-Protect when they are written to disk. Incoming email scans might catch a threat a little earlier in the process, but that is the only advantage - the threat would still be blocked when you accessed the attachment, anyway.
So essentially, you can dispense with either email scan and remain absolutely safe. In addition to the thread you linked to, there is another thread concerning this error message that you might want to check:
http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/Email-Error-421-with-Internet-security-2011/m-p/319962/highlight/true#M133484
Thanks for the feedback. I've turned off outbound Email scanning and that seems to have corrected the mail sending issues. Interestingly, the 'Protect against timeouts' option has been checked, but evidently that either doesn't work or needs a way to increase the time it will wait. Any chance that a TO value is defined in the Registry somewhere?
Unfortunately, this has apparently upset my AV software because it keeps telling me that I've got a configuration issue that I need to fix now (my system tray icon has the red exclamation mark on it, and whenever I open the console, it tells me my computer "needs attention" and I should let Norton fix itself now). :-\
It's too bad there's not a "I know what I'm doing and I really DO want it this way" option so it stops complaining about it. Now if something else really does get changed that I don't expect or want, I'll have been conditioned to ignore any warnings about it. <sigh>
shawnc1959 wrote:
It's too bad there's not a "I know what I'm doing and I really DO want it this way" option so it stops complaining about it. Now if something else really does get changed that I don't expect or want, I'll have been conditioned to ignore any warnings about it. <sigh>
Ah, but there is such an option! To turn off the "At Risk" alert, open the main Norton window and hover your mouse pointer over the words "Email Protection." This will reveal a popup that allows you to tell NIS to ignore your email scanning setting and to stop alerting you about it. To undo this, simply hover again and select the "Monitor" option.
And this doesn't actually change the configured Email scanning behavior, just whether Norton checks that this is enabled, correct? If so, that's very handy ... thanks! 
Yes, the "Ignore" and "Monitor" options pertain to the notifications only, and do not affect the enabled/disabled status of the email protection itself.
I've got two PCs running the same version of AV (not sure of the overall branded version, but "Help about" on the console shows 18.1.0.37), and both have experienced the pop-up message after attempting to send an Email "421 Unexpected failure, please try later". I'm not 100% certain, but I don't think I ever saw this with older versions (have been through several).
I found an earlier thread on here, and the person who replied gave feedback that it's a status coming back from the SMTP server and recommendations on fixing the mail settings. I'm very confident I don't have any systemic issues with Email, and this has happened trying to send messages of less than a couple of KB (so I know it's not huge attachments).
I'll accept that this is a mail server issue, but my questions are:
1) has the latest version of AV changed that how outgoing Email is scanned? I've had the same ISP (and mail configurations) for years, and have experienced the intermittent connection problem to the server. But I would see that in my mail client saying it had a problem, never with Norton AV being the one to complain about it.
2) if this is just the way this version works by default, is there a way to configure it to work like previous versions, so the mail client handles it? It seemed to be a lot less troublesome then (this pop-up is happening much more frequently than I'd think I have mail server problems, and it's resulting in sometimes having to try sending the same message 3 or more times before it works). Never had to do that before, and it would seem to be a pretty big coincidence that my ISP starts having a lot more mail server issues right after I upgrade AV.
3) I haven't explored it, but I presume I can configure AV to ignore outbound Emails entirely (and count on my other controls to keep me from getting and forwarding malware along). If I can, what the *real* risk with that?
4) If I can't get any of these to work, how difficult is it to downgrade to a previous version (never having done it)? This is becoming enough of a nuisance that I'd seriously consider it. :-(
Thanks in advance!