I want to disable BitDefender TS2016 from scanning or being involved in my email application (a desktop client), as I receive almost little suspicious email, and the various corporate, educational networks which serve my email generally perform a lot of filtering already.
1. My email client has been operating slowly because of the scanning (I run multiple security programs so this probably doesn't help), but my question is about... what type of security reduction would I have if I exclude email from being scanned?
2. I have a suspicion some people would say this is unacceptable (since many horrific threats originate in email), but virtually no emails ever make it through my spam filter that aren't trusted, and my previous malware issues were always browser related.
3. An addendum question is, generally, how does email-scanning work? Does BitDefender scan the attachments or executables inside the file? I assume it's not possible to execute code by simply sending someone an email that they read? (is this possible?); Should't I disable auto-opening email then from untrusted accounts?
4. I use a desktop client, but what about when I open webmail? How does BD work then?
*Really just looking for some general comments surrounding this topic and how BitDefender works specifically regarding email.
Thanks!