Assuming Norton Internet Security is so good that it will catch all incoming viruses, what's the point of scanning outgoing Emails for viruses? Since Norton is supposed to catch all viruses that enter your computer, there should never be a virus in your outgoing Emails! Is this logic correct?
Hi xrayrep
There is no security product that can protect a computer one hundred percent of the time. Norton provides a high level of security and that means that checking the transfer of data is apart of that high level security. As some infections can get through the auto protect that Norton can then find on a scan in some situations because an update allows the scan to recognise the infection.
ATB
intesec
Yet another excellent (& concise) answer, intesec - Kudos!
Hi ATB,
Thanks very much for your reply! I guess my concern is a problem that older versions of antivirus software had where they would sometimes corrupt outgoing Email attachments (even though the attachments were safe) and they would add additional dwell time to the Send Email process. I understand that those issues are of little to no concern with modern versions of antivirus software. So, although the risk of transferring an infected file through Email is extremely low, I believe in the old adage that it's better to be safe than sorry.
Best regards,
xrayrep
I agree it it totally unnecessary and I have never seen a single post here about it "catching" malware being sent because of the reasons you give.
I always figured the setting was left to please the users who don't understand is is not necessary.
An example of that would be the "office ducument scan". Thats also totally unnecesssary but every time there is a problem with it a lot of users complain thinking that it's leaving them less secure.
I guess sometimes it's easier to appease the users than try to tell them they are wrong.
Dave
Incoming email scanning is also not strictly essential either, but at least it's goal is to provide protection for your own computer, not someone else"s.
xrayrep wrote Assuming Norton Internet Security is so good that it will catch all incoming viruses, what's the point of scanning outgoing Emails for viruses? Since Norton is supposed to catch all viruses that enter your computer, there should never be a virus in your outgoing Emails! Is this logic correct?
As others have written, it's not strictly necessary to scan outgoing emails, as Auto Protect should pick up any malware. It's just another level of protection. 
So, in other words, it's useless to scan outgoing Emails, but it gives the user a warm fuzzy feeling that they are more secure. I still think it's a total waste of time and computer space, but if it doesn't corrupt my outgoing Emails, and if it doesn't add significant time to sending Emails, I'm going to leave it activated. (I like having a warm fuzzy feeling! :-) ) LOL
By the way, I wonder if Norton has ever collected any statistics from the field, by keeping track of how many times scanning outgoing Emails has actually proved beneficial. In other words, out of 100,000 outgoing Emails that were scanned and sent, how many infected Emails did Norton actually find and prevent from being sent? (false positives do not count)
Does anyone know?
xrayrep wrote:So, in other words, it's useless to scan outgoing Emails, but it gives the user a warm fuzzy feeling that they are more secure.
The warm fuzzy feeling is misplaced - it's not your computer that is being protected. Outgoing scans are for the benefit of your recipients, who frankly, if they are not running their own security software, probably deserve whatever they get. Email scanning is a vestigial remnant from an earlier time when people were opening virus-laden attachments with abandon. Incoming email scanning is just as antiquated and unnecessary as outgoing scanning, since it will catch nothing that Auto-Protect wouldn't detect anyway. But when people go shopping for an AV product, they expect it to provide "email protection"....so there you are.
Hi SendOfJive,
Very well stated. Thanks for your reply!
Isn't outbound scanning supposed
If you should get a bot planted on your PC and it is sending scam emails does nothing check for that?
Get a "bot planted on your PC"? LOL you watch too many Sci Fi movies! LOL 
xrayrep wrote:Get a "bot planted on your PC"? LOL you watch too many Sci Fi movies! LOL
A Bot on a PC / Laptop (Notebook) or Tablet is not Scifi, I just suppose that sort of reply is from a user that has no idea of what is out there, so the Norton on their system is doing its job.
Zbot is one name, and if I remember rightly even Rustock used a infected system to Spam (bot) out emails, some users reported the Norton alert messages of blocked emails even though they were not sending any emails.
Example http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-360/Norton-360-Email-Error/td-p/276697
Quads